
Coming soon: Fedora on Lenovo laptops - caution
https://fedoramagazine.org/coming-soon-fedora-on-lenovo-laptops/
======
enriquto
I don't believe it. They said the same thing more than a year ago, it is still
announced in their website for the P models (the choice for ubuntu or fedora),
but yet they are impossible to buy. I have harassed the lenovo sales people
for months and I have given up in buying a P laptop with linux installed. I do
not understand why do they play this kind of stupid games. The only thing that
they offer is to buy the laptop with windows, then renounce the windows
licence, then follow an online guide to install linux. Honestly, to buy a few
laptops for 4000 EUR each, it is fairly insulting to be told that.

~~~
axegon_
As you said, finding any laptop with linux is near impossible. Coincidentally
I have become friends with a guy at a large reseller near me, so every time I
want a new laptop, I call him up, tell him which ones I've set my eyes on,
then I go with a live USB to see which one works out of the box.

Manufacturers are obsessed with shoving some half-baked proprietary hardware
on their higher end laptops, rendering them unusable for anyone but Windows
users.

What really rises my eyebrow is the "fedora" part here. I haven't used Fedora
since 2015 and for the time being I don't intend to switch to anything
new/old. I can't recall a single time I've seen a linux-out-of-the-box laptop
that has anything other than Ubuntu(which I truly hate). It would be nice to
see someone putting something else and shipping it like that for a change.

~~~
bityard
> As you said, finding any laptop with linux is near impossible.

For you, maybe?

I can go on Dell's website and buy a laptop with Ubuntu on it right now. I'm
looking at it in my cart as we speak.

System76 is a reputable company that _only_ ships systems (including laptops)
with Linux on them. I don't own one but most reviews that I've read are quite
positive. (Both regarding the hardware and the System76 Ubuntu-based OS.)

Here are at least a couple dozen more:
[https://linuxpreloaded.com/](https://linuxpreloaded.com/)

~~~
axegon_
I've had very bad experiences with Dell's in the past so I'm staying away from
them. My previous laptop was a Dell and it caused me more problems than all
other laptops I've owned combined. And they are a tad... Overpriced imo. I
mean an xps is around 25-30% more expensive than an equivalent zenbook for
instance as a direct competitor. Currently I'm on a zenbook and it's been
incredibly reliable. I intend to switch laptop soon and I'm between one of the
newer zenbooks(yes, I'm aware of the bullcrap that is the screenpad, though
apparently now it even works on linux out of the box) or an hp envy x360 which
also apparently works out of the box.

I'm aware of System76 but I want to avoid buying a product that isn't that
mainstream outside the US market. I can't recall even seeing one out in the
wild anywhere. If something goes wrong with it, I'd need to ship it half way
across the world to get it fixed. Not a very solid plan on my end.

I generally need a smaller form-factor laptop, otherwise I'd even consider
something like cadnetwork because they too claim to have full linux support
and even though they are a small manufacturer, in normal conditions(covid-19
aside), Cologne is a 3 hour, 40-50 euro flight away from me.

~~~
bityard
It sounds like our experiences and locations are very different.

In the US, it's very hard to beat Dell on price. The only ones who can are
budget manufacturers and rebadged Chinese products, which usually gets you
underwhelming design and longevity.

Dell's lower-end consumer line products can be just as bad. I bought a cheap
Inspiron once that was the bane of my existence. But my last two business-
class laptops (a Latitude and now a Precision) have been pretty much flawless
despite heavy use and rough handling. I run Ubuntu on them both.

In the US, when you buy a business or enterprise product, my understanding is
that Dell will send a repair technician to your location. Sometimes you can
get them to just send you a replacement part, if you are very persistent.

------
TheSpiciestDev
Huh, I've been using Fedora on my personal T460 for a few years (now on 31)
without any major breaking issues. Performs well, upgrades well, bought
refurbished for ~$500 of Amazon, bought it extra RAM and an SSD, good life
w/standard battery, I can't remember ever hearing the fans run medium/high,
uses the standard Thinkpad docking station just fine, and more I'm sure. I'll
edit my post if I remember anything worth mentioning.

A few minor issues that seem to get resolved by software updates within weeks
of breaking installations:

\- The touchpad goes out, so I'll use the red keyboard nub or reboot the
machine.

\- Sometimes can't use the touchscreen (between larger upgrades) but I don't
use this often, it wasn't supposed to have one!

\- Screen can flicker in GNOME when bouncing between workspaces (Windows +
Page Up/Down)

Even then, these issues may just be my own machine/configuration!

Others have mentioned being wary of pre-installed Lenovo support, and I can
agree. While I'd still replace their Fedora for my own install, they'd
certainly help my confidence that the laptop was built to fit Linux
expectations.

~~~
lofties
I had the same issue with the touchpad going out on my Thinkpad, running
Ubuntu. This would always happen after coming out hibernation so I wrote a
systemd service[1] that runs a small shell script [2] after coming out of
hibernation.

[1]
[https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0...](https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/bfa498000f52fbf1b581b9a0cfad0e82)

[2]
[https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d...](https://gist.github.com/briandeheus/3c765d520680053da54b680d808e89ae)

~~~
TheSpiciestDev
Thank you!.. I'll keep your gists in-mind if I ever come across this trackpad
issue again. Thinking about it, since Fedora 30 or 29, I don't actually
remember encountering this problem - I know where to come back to if I do
though! Thanks again!

------
jacek
That's great news. It looks like Fedora will be available on the P series
(powerful workstations) and X1 Carbon. I hope it will soon be expanded to
other laptops. I am really interested in T series with AMD Ryzen 4000 line
(should be released later this year) and would love to avoid paying the
Windows tax.

I just wonder if the fingerprint reader is finally supported on Linux. Also
the LTE modem on my X1 Carbon (6th gen) has no support.

~~~
lnkmails
The fingerprint reader is not yet supported on 6th gen X1.I never tried to get
the LTE modem working. Funnily, I didn't even realize that the slot existed
for almost a year after purchase.

~~~
petepete
I don't know which model of fingerprint reader is in the 6th gen, but on the
7th gen, enabling the beta firmware made it work perfectly.

    
    
      $ fwupdmgr enable-remote lvfs-testing
    

If you temporarily enable, apply the Prometheus fingerprint updates then
disable you won't need to worry about installing unstable firmware that will
affect the system more widely.

~~~
jabl
fwupdmgr / LVFS is such a breath of fresh air compared to the various old
vendor specific fw update procedures!

~~~
petepete
The novelty of updating firmware via a GUI on Linux still hasn't worn off.

------
dyingkneepad
This is great news, even if you don't plan to use Fedora or if you plan to buy
the same laptop with Windows pre-installed instead of Linux. It means some Red
Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the laptop works. Even
if the patches are not all upstream at the time of release (and I'm 100% sure
the Fedora people will try to upstream as much as they can), you know they
exist and you will be able to use if needed.

I recently got a Thinkbook from my employer and the touchpad doesn't work and
there are no patches available for it. I'm stuck with having to use a mouse
because my employer didn't care consult me before buying a laptop...

The areas where Linux shine are the areas where people are paid to get open
source stuff done. And I am thankful for the existence of companies like Red
Hat, Suse and Canonical. Because HW manufacturers and OEMs clearly have no
clue about how to write and ship software...

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
> It means some Red Had people were paid to make sure all the hardware in the
> laptop works.

IIRC, I've heard from former RH engineers that RH _already_ runs mostly on
either Thinkpads or Dell laptops, so this could easily have been an internal
push to make their own rollouts easier. It certainly makes provisioning faster
if the guy preparing the Lenovo laptop doesn't have to start with blowing away
the OS, loading Fedora, and then applying a dozen patches or other config
changes to make the laptop happy w/ Fedora.

~~~
dyingkneepad
I understand what you say, but this is different because there is official
support from the OEM now. If something doesn't work the Red Hat engineer won't
have to reverse-engineer stuff, they will officially contact Lenovo, which
will officially contact the manufacturer of whatever component is not working,
and they are going to work to a solution the proper way. Much better and
faster than the alternative.

Source: I worked doing exactly this many years ago.

------
sh-run
This is a really good sign. I hope this means more corporate IT support for
Linux desktops. This is the first year I've been able to use Linux (Fedora 31)
on a corporate owned machine (T490s) and I don't think I could go back. For my
work, it really is a better experience.

I've also been using Fedora as the primary OS on my personal devices since
2011 (T410 -> x220 -> T470s and a couple of custom PCs). I stay on fairly
standard hardware and really haven't had any major issues in the past 9 years.

~~~
danans
> I hope this means more corporate IT support for Linux desktops.

Admittedly I'm biased by my own experience, but my understanding is that many
software-engineering-heavy companies already primarily use some flavor of
Linux for their corporate engineering workstations, including many of the
FAANG companies (and excluding, for obvious reasons, Apple).

Of course, I doubt many non-engineering workers are using a traditional
desktop Linux, but I recently noticed that my kids' pediatricians' office does
use a form of desktop Linux (something Gnome based) for their
scheduling/reception system computers.

~~~
sh-run
I’m at a FAANG for the first time, but was previously at a big financial
company with a relatively large IT org. It would’ve been nice to have an
option to use Linux there. I think FAANGs are the exception not the norm.

Edit: or maybe I haven’t been picky enough with my employers.

~~~
SahAssar
My last two employers (300-7000 employees) have both offered linux as a first
class citizen for support (along windows and macos). The hardware for linux
has been both very good and bad though, so the support does not count for much
if the hardware sucks.

------
vzaliva
I prefer Ubuntu. If I buy one of these models, does it mean that there are
drivers/support for all hardware in Ubuntu as well? Are some of the divers
proprietary or Fedora-specific?

~~~
gnulinux
I bought a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 7th gen a few months ago. And almost
nothing worked with Ubuntu 19.10 out of box. (Also tried Debian and archlinux
and had _worse_ driver problems). Wifi driver doesn't work; audio driver
doesn't work, pulseaudio is buggy (since volume up/down changes master and not
PCM so it does not change actual volume output); hibernation doesn't work
properly (still drains battery even when laptop lid is closed); wifi does not
connect to 5G even after driver starts working, screen tearing on fullscreen,
audio doesn't output as loud as Window even if it claims it's running software
amplification (150% volume)...

Most of these were fixable, but took about a week of research on random
forums, stackoverflow, kernel mail list (for wifi driver), Archlinux wiki
etc...

I never had any issues with linux before. Never. Zero. i was very excited when
I first bought this $3000 laptop since this is the first time I bought an
expensive electronics. It was absolute shit show from beginning to end.

I'm still dealing with screen tearing and audio being quiet (compared to
Windows running on the same machine, and my Macbook Pro playing the same
song). I decided last night, I'll try another distro such as Fedora. I feel
completely stuck. I hate using Windows. My macbook is work computer so I can't
use it for personal stuff. I'm just stuck in this $3000 computer that requires
hours of research every time.

I sure hope Lenovo get their act together and have a "Recommended" linux image
for these machines.

~~~
jchw
This was my experience with Lenovo laptops.

The thing is, I am pretty sure it's not uncommon. I'm pretty sure if you buy
completely brand new hardware, there's a good chance it won't be ready to run
Linux out of the box. Lenovo sure isn't putting in all the work to make it
happen.

On the flip side, if you're a developer it may not be outside the realm of
possibility to fix some of the problems yourself and contribute. If that's not
what you want to be doing with a new laptop, totally understandable, but I
have found some unexpected joy in doing so myself. Well OK. As long as nothing
is wrong with the WiFi.

After about a year, pretty much any Lenovo laptop should be working well out
of the box, at least that's what I've experienced.

~~~
vinceguidry
And then when it comes time to refresh the operating system in a few years,
get ready to do it all over again.

If you want hardware that is actually supported, buy System76 or Purism. I
have two Meerkats, a Thelio, and a Librem 13. Everything just works.

~~~
gnulinux
Our niche is very small. Most people are frustrated by linux, and switch to
Windows or OSX. I CANNOT do that, because Windows frustrates me even more,
systematically; at least on linux it's tremendous amount of frustration the
first time, then it just works. I suppose what I should have done was to buy
an older laptop, instead of a cutting edge one. Oh well. The more you learn...

------
mindcrime
Really glad they decided to launch this with Fedora. Nothing against Ubuntu
per-se, but I - and many others - prefer Linux from the RHEL / CentOS / Fedora
family. And there already are, or have been, OEM's shipping Ubuntu. Nice to
see somebody go with Fedora.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Any grey-beards wanna weigh in on the state of current ThinkPad models? There
usually seems to be quite a bit of nostalgia for the IBM-owned days, where
_everything_ was modular/replaceable and the laptops had a 10-year lifespan.

I've seen some murmuring that the more "ultrabook" they become, the less
dependable. In which case, I would probably just stick with the Dell XPS line,
which I've been pretty happy with so far.

~~~
INTPenis
My beard isn't completely grey yet but I've been to redhat offices in
Stockholm and most people there use Lenovo laptops.

I've enjoyed them for many years too. My first Lenovo "ultrabook" was X1
Carbon. It was quite obvious that there were very few (perhaps none) CRUs on
it. But it has served me for 4 years and still works. The battery discharges
faster now of course.

So late 2019 I got an X1 Yoga to replace it, 2nd Lenovo Ultrabook. So far so
good.

I work in Fedora every single day, very extensively. I find these laptops and
Fedora to be very dependable. But of course that means little because people
who run OpenBSD make the same claims.

------
recursive
One of the things that has kept me from trying Linux in earnest (and yes, I'm
very lazy) is concerns about which hardware is supported by which flavors, and
how much.

~~~
recursivedoubts
System76 just released the lemur pro:

[https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur)

You can option it up to 40GB of ram, it comes with a banging CPU and it weighs
less than a macbook air. System76 makes sure that PopOS and Ubuntu both work
flawlessly with their hardware.

I bought one the day it was released to replace my Carbon X1 (gen 6) and it
has been perfect. In particular for me, USB-C charging + monitor works
flawlessly when I disconnect and reconnect, and the power button is on the
side, which is great because I use my laptop as a workstation most of the
time.

Highly recommended if you want a linux machine.

~~~
gtf21
Really tempted by the System76 machines but my worry is the screen res. My MBP
(2014) has 2880x1800 and I really don't want to go down to something less
crisp than retina.

~~~
gtf21
Also would love to hear about the keyboard compared e.g. to the older MBPs and
the Thinkpads.

~~~
recursivedoubts
I plug in to a big monitor and full size keyboard for getting work done,
but...

Regarding the monitor, I find the 1920×1080 resolution fine at 14 inches.
Super high resolution monitors this small ended up being annoying to me.

Regarding the keyboard, I prefer the Carbon X1, which has deeper keys and more
key travel. The Lemur has keys similar to the macbook keyboard, very low
profile and very short travel.

~~~
gtf21
As in, the post-2015 unusable MBP keyboards or the nice ones? That might be
enough to push me towards the X1 instead of the Lemur although I'd love to get
a System76 just to have something from an independent shop from whom I might
expect decent service.

------
TheCapn
Fedora has been the only distro that seems to work with my ThinkPad Yoga
immediately after install. I battled against Ubuntu and other distros for ages
trying to get the screen rotation to work and eventually just made scripts to
convert between portrait and landsacpe and even with that the touch controls
failed to work properly.

------
evacchi
Red Hatter here. I have a Thinkpad T470s with Fedora as my daily driver and I
have to admit it works pretty flawlessly

~~~
m0xte
Interesting. My daily driver portable machine is a T470 so I may try that this
weekend. I run out of a docking station with two monitors so have been scared
to try it TBH. It works pretty flawlessly on windows though.

~~~
tristan957
I have a T470p with a docking station and an external monitor and I have no
complaints much like the other user.

------
murtio
Still, you'll get a machine that's not pleasant to look at. Funny that
GNU/Linux OS has been advancing greatly the past decade, outperforming Windows
and Mac, but without proper hardware match. Lenovo laptops are so ugly and
battery performance usually not more than 6h. My work laptop used to be Dell
7000 series, which is perfect on Fedora but with one drawback: calling Dell
support to change motherboard every 6 months. Now some companies come to fill
the gap, one of them is Purism. I was so happy to see them operating. Well,
after paying 1300$, for a really modest processor, the whole laptop fell apart
in less than 6 months. It was even worst than any Ascer laptops I've used!!
You finally, with all the shame, go back using a Macbook. Fedora on MacBook is
the future; but long way to go to get everything working properly.

------
tsar9x
Now Lenovo please step up your laptop game. 16:10 screen, small bezels, HiDPI
screen with sane resolution (like 3200x1800) -> good trade-off between battery
life and sharpness, and perfect for 2x integer scaling (better performance).
Good speakers and microphone.

------
bgorman
This would be a major game changer. Fedora does things the right way Linux
support wise (not relying on proprietary drivers). Combined with the high
build quality of a thinkpad, this may become the go-to developer laptop.

------
aquir
This is very good. Manufacturers will make sure that the hardware is fully
supported. There is also System76 and I think you can buy laptops from Dell as
well w/ Ubuntu preinstalled

~~~
N3cr0ph4g1st
My precision 5520 pre installed with Ubuntu was riddled with issues, had
garbage audio compared to the windows version (tried all kinds of eq programs
and tweaks), and the battery life was terrible... Was not a good experience

------
mtippett
Lenovo (IBM) has been an active supporter of Linux since around 2006. The
Thinkpad T43p had a lot of Linux enabled for the workstation users. I recall
when I was at ATI involved in their effort, we worked closely with the
engineering team in Japan to make sure that suspend/resume and hibernation
worked well with the graphics portion.

It's good to see that this has continued.

Don't underestimate how much use of Linux on high end PC hardware happens
within the Workstation market.

------
arendtio
Sounds great. From the major hardware vendors, I heard only of Dell, to offer
laptops with Linux preinstalled. Sadly my personal experience with an Dell XPS
was so bad (hardware, quality-wise) that I do not want to buy their hardware
again.

The big thing here is not that you don't have to install Linux yourself, but
that they care about the driver support. Not having to install a Linux
yourself is a nice bonus though.

~~~
TekMol
What was your problem with the Dell XPS hardware?

~~~
arendtio
It started with minor annoyances like the touchpad looking greasy at the
center after a few days (cleaning didn't make a difference). After a few
months, the touch screen didn't work anymore. I tried different OS and after a
while, I contacted the support. I had a call for about an hour during which
they updated the BIOS, but it didn't help. So they sent a technician, who
found out, that the Touchscreen didn't work, but had no replacement at hand.
So a few days later another technician came and replaced the display. I didn't
use the laptop very often at that time, but after a while, I noticed that the
display flickered sometimes now, I tried to track down the root of the issue
but to this day I don't know what causes it (at least it doesn't seem to be an
OS issue). However, by the time I found out that the flickering was not
related to the OS, the warranty period was over.

In addition, to the screen issues, the touchpad is just not good. In the
beginning, it was okay, after a while you couldn't press it properly anymore
(didn't came back up). Some time later, the opposite effect was present: the
touchpad popped out about 1mm and you can't press it again.

However, those are just the aspects in which I would categorize the issue as
low build quality. For example, other aspects are, that I like the keyboard
layout very much and learned that I hate glare-type displays even more than I
thought I would.

------
petepete
This is great news.

I use Fedora on a Thinkpad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) and it works flawlessly.
Enabling beta firmware even made the fingerprint reader (historically a
problem area) work perfectly.

I'd definitely have bought it with Fedora if it'd been available at the time,
the Windows 10 install was gone within twenty minutes of me opening the box.

------
elric
Why should I trust their Linux installation any more than their Windows
installations, which have been preloaded with backdoors, malware and all kinds
of phone-home nasties at least several times over the years? It'll be nice if
it ends up being cheaper than the Windows version, but I'll still be wiping
it.

~~~
bityard
Linked article states that all software installed on the laptop comes from the
Fedora repos.

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
This is awesome news with Fedora 32 right around the corner. I'm also in the
market for a new laptop pretty soon.

------
jonahbenton
As with most posters here:

* I love Fedora, use it as my primary OS for more than a decade

* also love Thinkpads, have used on and off for 25+ years

But I have mixed feelings about this announcement and hope it is just more
vaporware (as Fedora on Thinkpad has been announced before).

Part of what I love about Fedora is that it is _just_ on the other side of the
river from corporate RHEL. So it inherits a ton of the infrastructure and the
process and so forth, but it doesn't have to pay for it.

Instead Fedora gets shiny new things pretty quickly and sometimes, not often,
things break. Support is- whatever you can find. That's great.

Once you get into the world where stuff _has_ to work because sales and
support contracts- the dynamic changes. Fewer new things, less speed, more
conformity.

It's not Fedora any more.

We could see this looming in the acquisition. Hope it takes yet still longer
for the bureaucracy to chew through.

------
caution
A bit more information: [https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/24/a-bold-new-
chapter...](https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2020/04/24/a-bold-new-chapter-for-
fedora-workstation/)

------
mindcrime
Righteous!

I had heard vague rumblings that something like this might be in the works,
back when I was at Lenovo. Glad to see them actually take this step.

Now more than ever, I could see my next new laptop being a ThinkPad.

------
bitwize
Holy crap yes. I don't care for Fedora, but it beats having to scrape Windows
off, and hopefully it means these laptops will be engineered for Linux/open
source from the start.

------
yingw787
I have a ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installed. It works fine. By
contrast I had gotten a Dell Precision 5530 with Dell OEM Ubuntu, and after a
factory reset the GPU couldn't be detected afterwards. Unless they get things
like battery management or fractional scaling or a fingerprint reader working
properly, you already have the freedom to install Linux on your machine and
honestly you might do a better job than what a manufacturer might do anyways.

~~~
jabl
I also have a P1Gen2, though I'm still on Ubuntu 19.10, haven't updated to
20.04 yet. For the most part it works fine:

\- Haven't tried the fingerprint reader \- Multimonitor with the docking
stations is extremely flaky. With various messing around with
connecting/disconnecting cables, closing/opening the lid etc. I've
occasionally gotten it to work, but not reliably. \- Fractional scaling is
reportedly not working with the nvidia driver in 20.04. In 19.10 it does work,
though it's not enabled by default, you have to set an option on the cmdline
to make it appear in the GUI. \- And yeah, the entire multi-GPU thing is
klunky, as you have to run the prime-select tool and reboot when switching.

------
jhasse
I hope this won't be US-only, does anyone know more details?

~~~
caution
Looks like someone asked in the comments over there.

– Will it be available globally? I.E in the U.K?

>> As I understand the plan, yes, it should be globally, although there is
some amount of regulatory red tape that needs to be cleared everywhere so I
have no idea on timing. This is great for individuals around the world, of
course, but it’s also important for companies who want to standardize on a
Fedora OS and on the same laptop models worldwide

------
butz
Neat. I've already been running Fedora on my ThinkPad for a few years and it
works great. All devices are working, BIOS updates from boot USB. One issue
was with that Intel security thing that needed updates and it was impossible
to do on Linux. If someone is worried about backdoors or malware, you can
easily wipe whole drive and install fresh from trusted source.

------
arminiusreturns
I couple of words of warning.

1\. _Lenovo has a bit of a shady history_ , with Superfish and Service
Engine/Center being the main pre-installed malware or data leaking things that
come to mind. Those were windows focused, but if they'll do it there, why
wouldn't they do it on linux?

2\. Often manufacturers who ship linux will add really stupid EULA/TOSs to the
system. A few years ago I bought a Dell linux system only to be greeted by one
that had all kinds of things like arbitration clauses I did not agree to, so
_I highly suggest not using pre-shipped linux versions!_

3\. _Be prepared to distro-hop to find the right one_ , regardless of "linux
compat" tags. Each batch of production even on the same laptop line will have
small variations, and after many years of testing linux on many laptops, my
general advice is you really have to distro-hop to find the right linux for
the laptop you have. I know this isn't ideal, but it is the state of things.
For example, I have a newer Ryzen laptop 2-in-1. Every single major distro
including arch with newer kernels had major, showstopping issues... On a hunch
I tried Devuan... and I have now been running a non-systemd system for half a
year with no major issues at all. (and it helps me stay on top of sysvinit
land since I still manage some non-systemd boxen) On other systems I've had to
distrohop and the one that works ends up being something else. For example in
2015 I had a MBP on which Ubuntu seemed to just work better than fedora or
debian or arch. In 2017 the MBP I had Manjaro ended up being what worked over
the others. (the Manjaro hardware detector is the best in linux land imho)

4\. _Consider different desktop environments and window managers_. One of my
pet peeves is someone trying out Ubuntu with KDE/Gnome with something and when
it doesn't work throwing up their hands. I think far too often what people
blame linux for is really the fault of the DE/WMs. Consider going outside the
norm, try XFCE, i3, or my favorite, Awesome. (there are many more)

5\. Finally, while I understand we all want things to just work on the
practical side, remember that computing is inherently an ideological choice,
at least in my opinion it is. (I am excluding work computing because sometimes
you don't get a choice on that / _stares at work Macbook menacingly_ ) I
believe in the four freedoms as posited by RMS and try to match my actions to
that, for example almost everything I use is gpl+, with only a few exceptions
which I am always looking for alternatives to. I've sacrificed some things to
get here (gaming w/ friends on some games that don't work in proton/wine, for
example) but it is worth it to me.

------
blaser-waffle
Don't tease me like this son. Currently running Fedora on an old Thinkpad.

If this was truly serious I would be interested. Dell has had a tenuous
relationship with Ubuntu, but it was enough that I seriously looked at their
business line a few months back.

------
mokus
I have mixed feelings here. On one hand, more hardware makers supporting Linux
is good. On the other, I don’t really feel like I want the kind of pre-
installed “support” software Lenovo has given Windows to come to Linux.

~~~
mattdm
Good news! The people we are working with at Lenovo have no interest in this
either. We don't have any special deal here: they're shipping Fedora under the
standard open source licenses and
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#OE...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Legal:Trademark_guidelines#OEM_pre-
loads_of_unmodified_Fedora_software), which means there's nothing added
(except their docs in /opt/lenovo).

------
cbHXBY1D
Interesting. I wonder if this will help bring better eGPU support. I have a
Thinkpad 25 Retro with an NVIDIA 940MX and it doesn't play well with suspend
and resume, optimus, etc.

------
codeisawesome
Oh wow! I think I could finally be tempted to get an X1..!

~~~
LeonM
Don't even bother.

I have an X1E and the whole dual GPU situation is still a mess under Linux.

Of course it depends on your use-case, but stuff like running external
displays or using fractional scaling on the 4k internal display never seems to
work. nVidia drivers are buggy a/f, Nouveau is a pain to get working properly.

~~~
elric
I had a hard time getting Fedora to run reliably on the P53 models we recently
bought. Of course, NVIDIA turned out to be the culprit once more. Things
improved after installing the proprietary drivers, but it sure would be nice
if things would Just Work out of the box.

------
holtalanm
Honestly, ever since i moved from a pure linux environment, to just using
Windows 10 pro, I have had 0 issues, and have spent a significantly smaller
amount of time tweaking my environment settings.

I get why some people would want a bare-metal OEM install of linux for
technical reasons (some languages/tools just run better on linux, or are only
available on linux), but I really don't understand the hate people have for
Windows 10. With the WSL, I've actually got a linux shell I can pop into
whenever the need comes up, as well.

~~~
slipheen
I don't hate Windows 10 by any means, I just find Linux works better for me.

I use a Thinkpad and all the drivers work fine without tweaking, so that's not
an issue for my setup.

Personally, I just really like the little features I get with Linux.

For example, I have a little script that recognizes when I insert a certain
encrypted SD card, and automatically copies over some config files from my
home directory.

There may be a way to do that on Windows, it's just so much easier on Linux
that Windows doesn't seem worth the trouble.

~~~
holtalanm
All of your statements make perfect sense. I was more addressing the comments
that were acting like Windows was some kind of toxic sludge they had to swim
through to get to a linux install.

~~~
Lio
Much of that stems from the days when Microsoft used to threaten OEMs that
offered an alternative to Windows.

I don't want to use Windows. That's not because Windows is bad it's because I
like Linux and want to have good Linux experience. That Microsoft has
previously used try to stop that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

------
oriettaxx
omg, is it true! finally!! i have to get a new lenovo in soon, and this is
_really_ good news! I will skip the windows backshis :)

------
tshanmu
Bought a used ThinkPad 420 and stuck arch with lxqt on it. My teen child is
quite happy with it!!

------
daffy
Great. Do they come without hardware backdoors as well?

------
smacktoward
Finally!

