>Why is it reasonable? Does it bring more money to Lenovo shareholders?
Dear god, am I supposed to care about the shareholders now? People don't buy products out of empathy for shareholders.
I don't consider "higher support costs" to be a valid pretext for trying to obstruct me from configuring my property as I please.
The idea that people may cluelessly mess around in the BIOS and render the machine unbootable is not a particularly sensible basis to argue about the configurability of AHCI mode. It is always going to be possible to render a machine unbootable via changing the BIOS configuration. A BIOS setup menu cannot serve its purpose if it doesn't allow you to change settings which could render the machine unbootable. (Most directly, a boot password you immediately forget.) If machine manufacturers aren't willing to offer options that may render the machine unbootable, they may as well not offer BIOS setup menus at all.
> Dear god, am I supposed to care about the shareholders now? People don't buy products out of empathy for shareholders.
No. People buy Lenovo because many reasons, but not because of empathy... or because their friendliness to Linux.
And, by the way, you still don't get it. You're not the one to decide on behalf of Lenovo what's reasonable for them to do, unless you're their CEO. You can say this or that is reasonable, but ultimately they are the ones responsible to decide what's best for the business (I.e. for the shareholders).
> I don't consider "higher support costs" to be a valid pretext for trying to obstruct me from configuring my property as I please.
Nobody cares what you consider valid, unless you share opinion with a majority. That's, unfortunately, how the world works.
And actually you can run Linux on it. You just have to write the driver, or pay someone to do it. Or use an external HD, or live boot...
Ask Intel about why there's no driver. Ask Lenovo why they've used Intel hardware (this second one might be easier to answer).
> The idea that people may cluelessly mess around in the BIOS and render the machine unbootable is not a particularly sensible basis to argue about the configurability of AHCI mode. It is always going to be possible to render a machine unbootable via changing the BIOS configuration. A BIOS setup menu cannot serve its purpose if it doesn't allow you to change settings which could render the machine unbootable. (Most directly, a boot password you immediately forget.) If machine manufacturers aren't willing to offer options that may render the machine unbootable, they may as well not offer BIOS setup menus at all.
1- The problem is not rendering your machine unbootable by messing with the BIOS settings. The potential issue is running the wrong drivers for your local storage.
2- Surely BIOS would become less and less configurable, just look at Apple's. Look at your smartphone. Can you run Linux on your iPhone? Can you run iOS or Windows on your Android? That's where we're going I'm afraid :-(
I'm here just trying to explain why this is not a black and white thing, why there are more factors than the technicals and why this is not a conspiracy but a disdain for the non-Windows market.
I'm not sure why some of you think I'm defending Lenovo and get angry at me. Do you guys get so angry at your teacher in history class? :-)
> People buy Lenovo because many reasons, but not because of empathy... or because their friendliness to Linux.
Lenovo's Linux compatibility has been a selling point for Linux users from what I've gathered talking to people and reading forums (see for example [0]). It was one of the reasons I bought a Lenovo.
Yup, along with the lovely trackpoint and generally high build quality, it's why I used to buy and recommend ThinkPads. But after all of their nonsense over the last year or so I'm done with Lenovo. It's going to take them a long time to win back my business.
For all that, I'm not suggesting for a moment that I believe this is part of some grand conspiracy to persecute Linux users. This is just another dumb, short-sighted decision by Lenovo that results in them trying to sell semi-broken hardware.
Dear god, am I supposed to care about the shareholders now? People don't buy products out of empathy for shareholders.
I don't consider "higher support costs" to be a valid pretext for trying to obstruct me from configuring my property as I please.
The idea that people may cluelessly mess around in the BIOS and render the machine unbootable is not a particularly sensible basis to argue about the configurability of AHCI mode. It is always going to be possible to render a machine unbootable via changing the BIOS configuration. A BIOS setup menu cannot serve its purpose if it doesn't allow you to change settings which could render the machine unbootable. (Most directly, a boot password you immediately forget.) If machine manufacturers aren't willing to offer options that may render the machine unbootable, they may as well not offer BIOS setup menus at all.