This looks like a timely moment to bring up Cory Doctorow's The coming war on general computation talk:
> So today we have marketing departments who say things like "we don't need computers, we need... appliances. Make me a computer that doesn't run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn't run programs that I haven't authorized that might undermine our profits". And on the surface, this seems like a reasonable idea -- just a program that does one specialized task -- after all, we can put an electric motor in a blender, and we can install a motor in a dishwasher, and we don't worry if it's still possible to run a dishwashing program in a blender. But that's not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We're not making a computer that runs only the "appliance" app; we're making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn't want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.
That talk is so awesome. I still watch it about once a year, just because it is so much fun to listen to.
It is also slightly depressing in how right he is - back then I thought the guy was sounding kind of paranoid, but with every passing year and every new wave of hype (the cloud(TM), IoT, "Industrie 4.0", ...), and with every case of stuff like Superfish, I think of that talk and cannot help thinking that he was right all along. (It is a lot of fun to listen to, though, Doctorow is a great speaker!)
I don't buy this. For example, if I rent an apartment, but there is a locked cupboard in it where the landlord stores a bunch of tools and other bits and pieces, I don't complain to AirBnB that I didn't get the full use of the property, and start a campaign suggesting they are infringing my rights by not letting me access the landlord's cupboard?
If I buy a device that is advertised to do X, and this is accomplished by running a program to do X on a locked-down general purpose computer, then it is (assuming no issues with program X) fit for purpose by any definition. If I wanted a general purpose computer, I would purchase one. The fact of the implementation detail being a general purpose computer is irrelevant, it doesn't impair my ability to do X if I cannot remove X and install Y, in fact it improves the ability to do X, by preventing the possibility of all sorts of misconfigurations and installation incompatibilities.
I admit that it's hard to find real-world analogies, and the landlord-cupboard above is not a perfect fit, but I still have no problem with saving money by purchasing a device that does one thing, and one thing only. I have no expectation that it be hackable or extensible, unless it is advertised as such.
I think you want to read the full transcript or listen to the whole talk instead of just respond to the one paragraph I highlighted. The context is quite important.
The worst part is the reaction from Lenovo in my opinion. They just locked the thread reporting the issue on their forum, not saying anything about the problem itself but instead threatened the community to turn the pre-approval option on. This really makes me angry and makes me want to boycott their products.
I really hope this issue will spread so that Lenovo learn that they made a bad move on this one.
It also made me realize how important it is to have a community on which one can rely to spread problems like this one. Several people on their own can't do much against big companies, but a big tech commnity can.
> It also made me realize how important it is to have a community on which one can rely to spread problems like this one. Several people on their own can't do much against big companies, but a big tech commnity can.
I never think that a support forum should be owned by the company.
There is a clear conflict of interest. The company does not want you calling them out on product flaws or their behaviour, on a site that they own and that reflects on their brand and products.
It's a shame that fora frequently are not financially viable, as they do need to exist to provide a centralised place for consumers to gather, share problems, diagnose and solve them.
Companies shouldn't run their support forums. Instead, companies should offer a better level of support by default.
They shouldn't operate the servers, and they shouldn't have moderator power over them. It's fine to have reps answer questions on unaffiliated third-party sites, as long as it doesn't turn into sponsorship or some other COI.
This. Also companies that delete embarrassing threads are shitty companies, I wouldn't buy anything there. Support forums are everywhere, from Reddit to SO anyway
I suspect same is true for viri/viruses and formulae/formulas but I'm not even worried enough about to check. Me saying 'viri' or 'formulae' would be me being a person I don't want to be.
You are, of course, correct - unlike those people who write 'viri' or, even more often, 'virii' instead of the correct Latin 'vira' - which, as it happens, is not part of common English use.
This is true, but the linguistic difference is too subtle and too technical to be safely relied upon in normal usage. (In this context, indexes are better thought of as sets of "entries" or "references" rather than "indices".)
I get all my systems from [ThinkPenguin](https://www.thinkpenguin.com/), and have been very happy with them. Those folks are dedicated to free software.
I run Debian and XMonad on a Macbook Pro with 16GB of memory. Nice machine. I guess it would still dual boot to OSX, but I haven't tried for more than a year.
No, not really. When my purchase was made, the Macbook Pro had the nicest screen and form factor with 16GB of memory.
I debated the Carbon X1 at the time, but I recall it was limited to 8GB of memory. I regularly work with Java-based ETL tools and datasets that spill out of 8GB, so having 16GB was important. I could have gotten more memory if I wanted a bigger form factor but I really didn't want to lug a "workstation replacement" around.
A couple of years ago I said if the Macbook lasted as long as my Thinkpad X200 did (4-5 years), it would be a reasonable purchase.
If I was buying today, I might just buy some type of large screen Chromebook and do everything on some cloud VM instance with even more memory.
I'm not convinced but your argument doesn't really pan out. Microsoft own Lenovo wrt what OS installs are made: by preventing any OS install except the factory one they can guarantee such devices will start at Win10 and only change if MS deem it. If they allowed reinstalls then users might be able to install Win7 or another OS.
You're missing the point. The mode of operation is defined in the BIOS, and these parts have been deliberately disabled. Whilst in theory it's true that Debian could potentially release a version in the future at present due to delibrate crippling in the BIOS (changed firmware to disable features) one can not even workaround this.
Acer used to do something somewhat similar on some Aspire models (disabling option to enable Vx at BIOS) so using VirtualBox was a no starting, but with some creativity and long winded efi vars mounting and fiddling you could get it working or break your system, not soldering though :)
I'd be interested to see how it pans out Lenovo community admins are worse than Acer community. At least with Dell I find a few engineer on Twitter and ping them..
Disabling the vx toggle in the bios bit me a couple times... it's just weird that a vendor would do that in the first place. Fortunately, at home I've always built my own, but laptops are so much more limited in terms of freedom.
afaik, there are no divers for this yet. anyways, the problem is not the drivers, its the fact that lenovo blocks BIOS options to allow discs to be accessible from non windows10 system.
> That's incorrect. Someone from Lenovo had already posted in the thread saying that it had been escalated.
Well, it had been escalated two months ago and not only there's no fix but not even an explanation why somebody made the deliberate effort to disable standard AHCI mode.
It's not some weird and difficult bug which should take months to track down, but an obvious intentional kludge. All they have to do is say why they did it and either revert this BIOS patch or explain why they can't.
I was talking about the last post, sorry if that wasn't clear. My point was, if other people have the same problem and find the thread, they will not read 19 pages and rather go to the last one to see where's the issue at. And there they will find nothing that answers their question. Lenovo staff could have at least have said "it is a known issue" / "it is a driver issue" / "We have an agreement with Microsoft"... Whatever the reason is.
The last post links to the post from a mod saying the issue has been escalated.
That last post also makes it clear that the thread isn't locked, but that you can't use Lenovo forums to call for a boycott of Lenovo products or to coordinate lawsuits against Lenovo. That doesn't seem particularly outrageous to me.
I won't do business with Lenovo after running into multiple BIOS soft locks. The first, I was attempting to install a WiMaX card into some random laptop, and the last Thinkpad I had was BIOS locked to only be able to accept the 80GB HDD that it came with. It would have been so snappy with an SSD! It has been three years now that I refuse to purchase any products from the company and six years since I ran into their first BIOS soft lock. I was yelling about it back then, but nobody gave a shit.
swings a lit lantern around the marketplace at noon
The other HN thread suggests this not actually a dark conspiracy by Microsoft but simply a case of missing linux drivers for the storage devices.
This sounds believable to me. But I'll put my tinfoil hat on just for fun and pretend it was an intentional move. Could this make sense as a new twist on the old strategy, making it "Embrace, Extinguish, Extend"?
With the WSL, they made it theoretically possible to run Linux software on Windows. With that in place, locking existing users out of Linux might cause a lot less negative backlash as the users can still continue to use their old programs - except under the supervision of Windows. If this catches on, it could actually allow Microsoft to grab some if the more consumer-oriented parts of the Linux ecosystem.
More likely, it's a conspiracy against Win7/Win8 users, which hurts Linux users as collateral damage. What likely happened was the ms/lenovo deal was "And Lenovo will make sure win7 and win8 are not supported on laptop", which lenovo solved by switching the hard drive to a mode not even win10 supports, locking it that way (that's the evil part), and putting drivers for it on the lenovo install media, which are win10 only.
Thus, this laptop can only ever be installed from the Lenovo win10 media. No win7, no win8, no retail win10 (for now), and .... probably as a (not unwelcome) side effect, no linux.
Not at all. To be effective, it doesn't need to stop a very determined user (as evidence, someone reflashed the bios so they could install Linux).
And it does effectively stop users from installing Linux, Win7, Win8 and even Win10 - except from the provided Lenovo install media; which makes Microsoft happy (no Win7/Win8) and Lenovo happy (full control of installed versions).
I'm speaking of Windows drivers in general. I can't make any specific guarantees for these particular drivers, but I don't see why they should be different.
If you read the original reddit thread, you would understand that this is not just a drivers issue. Lenovo intentionally programmed their BIOS so that it reverts any changes to RAID mode making it impossible to install Linux.
True - but as the other HN thread (that I can't seem to find anymore ><) pointed out, if Microsoft's requirements were planned as an attack against free software, it would be an unnecessarily complicated and ineffective one: There is nothing stopping anyone from writing Linux drivers for the new RAID mode - and I guess if more models with this setup show up, eventually someone will write one.
On the other hand, Microsoft could have easily gotten a much more "robust" lockdown - by simply demanding mandatory, unchangeable Secure Boot like on the ARM tablets. But they didn't do that.
Can they not modify that BIOS code to not skip those pages?
I'm sure anyone with enough knowledge to decompile a BIOS would have obviously thought of that idea though. I'm guessing the BIOS images are signed or something?
>On the other hand, Microsoft could have easily gotten a much more "robust" lockdown - by simply demanding mandatory, unchangeable Secure Boot like on the ARM tablets. But they didn't do that.
Didn't you hear that Secure Boot is basically broken?
RAID on a machine with a single SSD (and no provision to add another)? It'd make far more sense if the BIOS was setup so the RAID option was always disabled.
Edit: it'd be rather amusing and saddening if this whole controversy was caused merely by someone misunderstanding/misreading a perfectly sensible requirement to disable the RAID mode, and instead disabled the other options. Given the level of communication fluency among some programmers, I would not be surprised if this were the case; and the fact that the machine still boots into Windows because it has drivers might've let this slip past QA...
The choice seems to be between AHCI and sorta-NVMe, with the latter enabled in 'RAID' mode.
Sure, real/standards-conforming NVMe would be better -- and wouldn't require driver shenanigans in either Windows or Linux -- but there should be a performance advantage to 'RAID' mode in this case.
According to a comment there, it's not hardware, it's a BIOS setting.
> I've been able to successfully get past Lenovo's lock through direct bios flashing. I'm looking into better solutions, hopefully I can find a way to do this without an external programmer. I was going to keep people updated from the Lenovo forum, but as this is no longer an option I will keep people updated from here.
I agree completely with that. I responded because I partially disagreed with your earlier statement; I think it misses the point.
It's a locked UEFI setting causing a problem: true. The setting is causing a piece of hardware to behave in a mode not handled by the current Linux driver: also true. So there are two ways of looking at it.
First: It's a software issue that Lenovo should clear up (i.e. remove the locks on the appropriate parts of the UEFI configuration)
Second: It's a hardware issue that the Linux community can address by writing a driver for the alternate hardware mode.
For RAID hardware, it's not that unusual to have a device that isn't supported by standard Windows install media. To install Windows, you'd put the Intel-provided driver on another medium (or slipstream it into the Windows one), and click "load driver" in the installation GUI.
Lenovo apparently wants to treat that computer as an appliance; if someone borks their installation enough that even a system restore won't fix it, it's a call to Lenovo support, and a bill if the machine's out of warranty.
For customers whose Windows installations are working correctly, it's access to a faster, more power-efficient driver. That's how it makes sense, IMO.
A serious question: What gives Linux users the right to expect that Linux will run on any given PC / laptop?
Think about it. These PCs/laptops are designed to adhere to Microsoft's Windows PC hardware standards doc (which was never, ever an open standard) and, with few exceptions, only tested against various versions of Windows. Linux users are failing to receive a feature that they were never promised in the first place so it's unclear that they have any valid cause for complaint.
Perhaps Linux, BSD, etc. users should be creating their own PC standards doc and asking OEMs to adhere to it instead?
What gives Linux users the right to expect that Linux will run on any given PC / laptop?
Nothing. It's very well possible that in future, we have Apple devices that only run iOS, Google devices that only run Android/ChromeOS/Whatever and Microsoft devices that only run Windows 10 - and a large server market with a tiny consumer segment of devices that run linux.
We'll all be fine in that world. We just won't have any control about our devices anymore.
Perhaps Linux, BSD, etc. users should be creating their own PC standards doc and asking OEMs to adhere to it instead?
That's actually a good idea in theory - so far that "standard" had been the x86/x64 IBM compatible PC. Except that I fear they lack the market power to actually make such a standard more than a stack of paper. You'd need an OEM network the size of Microsoft or enough capital and brand trust so you can make your own devices. I see neither for linux.
The laptop supports a Linux-compatible option, and effort was expended specifically to disable that option. If some hardware isn't supported by Linux drivers, that's understandable. If software is added to restrict the modes that the hardware is allowed to operate in, and the restriction wasn't disclosed at the time of sale, I'll return the hardware, because the product doesn't match what I thought I was buying.
If I buy some hardware, I've done research on whether all of its chipsets and devices have Linux driver support just as a matter of course, because I don't expect that Linux will run on every PC. But I feel like I have a right to know if a company puts a non-standard artificial restriction on their hardware. Apparently in this case, Windows 10 doesn't even have the driver included by default, so I can't even reload the software that the machine was designed to run, on my own. That sounds like a defect in the product, to me.
Intel's RAID is implemented in their driver. Switching the option from AHCI to RAID switches the disk controller's ID so it doesn't bind to the OS's standard driver (whichever OS that is), and binds to Intel's instead (assuming it's present). Intel provides its driver (and only for Windows), Lenovo locks the option so that hapless users mucking about in the UEFI settings don't make their machines unbootable.
Lenovo can deny "deliberately blocking Linux", but they can't deny "practically blocking Linux".
I get your point; I don't buy an iPhone and then complain when it won't load android. however, I've been able to load linux on almost any laptop I've bought for the last 20 years, so they are making a significant change here, and haven't made it particularly widely publicized.
Does that include your cable company DVR, your PS4, your doorbell, your wifi-enabled refrigerator, your thermostat, and the 50 other devices in your home that contain (or are) computers?
Personal computers are perceived as the last vestige of this sort of freedom in a consumer product, hence the outrage.
None of those other examples are sold with the intention of the user changing the system in a way unexpected by the vendor.
PCs are supposed to be open-ended, and for this you typically pay more for the hardware capability than a product which serves as a gateway into a walled-garden ecosystem (phones, gaming consoles, etc.)
Any cpu in my household is mine (presumably.) I don't care what peripherals it has, it's just a computer.
From my POV all those devices are just computers with various peripherals. I don't see any way in which attaching a specific peripheral changes the universal nature of the cpu.
If I buy a microsoft windows laptop, I don't expect it to be locked so I can't install.... microsoft windows.
How else am I going to avoid the crapware/malware that lenovo is famous for?
Happens that the same BIOS tweak that prevents windows from working also prevents linux from working.
I don't expect lenovo to spend time/effort accommodating linux, but I also expect them to not artificially limit when I can do with a laptop I purchase.
I doubt that. It's more likely that Best Buy's "Lenovo Product Expert" misunderstood the review and referred to the agreement to not install any software on Signature Edition devices.
I have no serious position on whether Microsoft is currently enforcing secret deals to sabotage Linux, but I'm sure the employee assigned to respond to product reviews would not be given such inside information.
The one point where he might got confused is to what is locked and why. I had to recherche that for a Laptop I wanted to fix, and found out that Lenovo is known to lock down the Bios to an absurd degree. My model had an accessible Bios, but you could only change the most basic parameters, like the time. There was some talk about needing to flash another Bios, sadly I found nothing for the specific model I worked with.
But there Linux should've booted, I was trying to change some energy saving settings.
So it might be that this is not a "by contract with Microsoft we locked down the Laptop to only boot Windows", but a "by contract with Microsoft we locked the Bios, which has the side effect of preventing booting Linux because the Kernel does not support yet a specific setting, which will change". Who knows.
It's still a bad policy, and even if it were an accident they have to fix it. They can not be allowed to prevent Linux from booting.
I don't think being able to change the drive to AHCI mode would fix the problem. The BIOS (actually UEFI) "locking" and storage driver are two separate issues. I mean, hell, if someone wants to send me one of these laptops I'll test it and do a full writeup.
Of course Reddit has gone off without anyone actually confirming what the issue is. Microsoft would be smart to come out with a statement on this if it picks up any steam.
"I don't think being able to change the drive to AHCI mode would fix the problem."
One user Bownairo confirmed that changing the drive to AHCI mode did fix the problem by allowing the drive to be recognized in Linux, after manually flashing a modded BIOS by soldering chip programming hardware:
I'll spell it out: a Lenovo representative said "This system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft." This is what people are reacting to.
Now, of course the rep might be mistaken. We need official clarification from someone higher up. But we won't get that until we go off on one and this goes viral.
> Thank you for confirming it is still not possible to install Linux on Yoga 900-13ISK2 systems.
> This issue has been escalated to the Development team. I am unable to offer a timeframe for fix at this stage in the investigation. With previous cases, BIOS fixes have been delivered anywhere from several weeks to several months.
> I will post again when I have more information on the investigation.
Yes, but has anyone verified that? The person posting it even said they've booted a Linux installer - if it was "locked" at firmware level you wouldn't even be able to do that.
What needs to be verified, and by whom? Right now we have one assertion, from a person claiming to be a Lenovo representative (an "expert" even), on a Lenovo-hosted forum.
It is not up to the rest of the world to divine meaning from Lenovo's PR policy. If they are happy to allow nitwits to make public statements like that, they should be fully prepared to handle the fallout.
The screenshot that particular quote comes from appears to be from a Best Buy review section not a Lenovo hosted site, so it's unclear whether the Lenovo Product Expert is even a Lenovo employee or just the Best Buy droid assigned to answering Qs for Lenovo products.
/r/linux is the most ridiculously paranoid forum I've seen.
You have to go there to see it for yourself. Imagine the way that HN is paranoid of the US government, but then double that and apply it to Microsoft, which makes even less sense. To them, MS is the boogeyman that will stop at nothing to prevent them from being the glorious 1% that doesn't use Windows. It's still the 90's on /r/linux, in many many ways.
Yea but sometimes you need a group of extreme people to offset the other extreme you get with locked bootloaders etc. Not saying they are always right, but I am happy we still have people around with 0 trust in MS.
It is entirely possible that Microsoft asked for them to be locked down.
While OEMs try to spin crapware as a value add for the consumer, it's actually paid product placement. The OEMs make money off of installing crapware on your PC.
So, if the Signature Editions don't have crapware then that eats into the OEM's profit margins. What incentive do OEMs have to deploy the Signature Edition? Does Microsoft offer it at a lower cost? Do they pay OEMs to make Signature Editions?
It's entirely possible that if Microsoft is selling the Signature Edition for less or even paying OEMs to deploy it, then they might also make greater demands about system configurations and even ask that the devices be locked.
Microsoft requires Secure Boot on all Windows machines but only requires locked firmware on Mobile/RT devices. It's possible they could require locked firmware on Signature Editions as well.
The website is down from the load, it will come back after a while.
The article is based on many sources, in the original forum thread on Lenovo forums there are many people who faced the problem with other models, some weren't even Lenovo but the problem with Lenovo is that the BIOS is locked completely, those people (using ASUS and Dell laptops) confirmed the problem is solved after the switch to AHCI from RAID.
This is horribly misleading - http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/44694.html has some more details. But the short version is that Lenovo are force-enabling a feature that ensures they get better power management, and which is unsupported under Linux because Intel have never submitted code. If Intel ever do so (or if someone else writes it), Linux will just work.
It's not horribly misleading, Matt. If you view it from the perspective of the average Linux user, I think you'd agree that:
1. Lenovo is usually one of the first choices for a Linux laptop.
2. Lenovo obviously has made the call here to ignore the Linux community on their forums.
3. Lenovo has actually stated "This system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft." -- whatever that means.
4. Win10 dropped the requirement that Secure Boot can be disabled. This has already been filed as a complaint to the EC:
I remember when in 2012 secure boot was announced for the new
Windows 8. I am from Spain, and at that time a lawyer (Jose
Maria Lancho[1]) that was the president of a Spanish LUG
(Hispalinux) create a official complain to the European
Commission about the Windows 8 certification program in
relation with the requirements of Secure Boot.
At that time the certification program describe that one of
the requirement was to have an option to disable SB via UEFI,
but only for desktops and laptops, but not for tables. Now
this option is not anymore required for the Windows 10
certification program. That point was one of the argument
that we exposed in the complain.
Is very sad to see that the circle is closing as we
predicted in the complain, and with this new Signature
Edition thing a new movement in this direction. And so far,
the European Commission is not doing anything in that
regard, and less and less hackers, lawyers, and groups are
fighting against this kind of movement.
Do you happen to know what RAID mode does exactly? I will gladly write the Linux NVMe support for it if it's reasonably straightforward, but I couldn't get my XPS 13 to boot anything at all in RAID mode so I'm a bit stuck.
P.S. that missing NVMe power saving piece is now implemented for Linux and will hopefully be queued for Linux 4.9 :)
It sounds like Lenovo's BIOS is using a RAID mode with the internal SSD that Linux does not understand. Lenovo apparently provides a driver for this RAID mode for Windows 10. If you want to install something else (Linux, Windows 8) you are out of luck until someone produces a driver for that operating system.
> Nope. You can turn Secure Boot off on the Lenovo Yoga models that this affects.
> They have the SSD in some strange "RAID" mode where Linux can't see or be installed to it, and neither can Windows unless you add some drivers to your Windows installer media. They removed AHCI mode from the BIOS. Then they wrote additional code so if you try to toggle it to AHCI mode with an EFI variable from EFIshell, it immediately sets itself back to RAID.
> For the last 11 months, they were silent on why this machine was configured this way. The only reason we know why now is because Lenovo answered my Best Buy review by stating it is locked due to the agreement they signed with Microsoft for the Signature Edition PC program, so it's very likely that all Ultrabooks in the Microsoft Store, and some outside the MS Store (such as at Best Buy) will eventually be configured so that Linux can't be installed, even if there are some now where you can install Linux.
> So consider "Signature Edition" a warning label that means "You aren't allowed to run Linux, per Microsoft.".
If this [1] Lenovo employee's answer is a real deal, and this was in fact sanctioned by MS, I wonder if their actual goal was to prevent people from installing Windows 8/7/whatever. MS did go on record by saying they are willing to block people from installing old versions on new hardware. [2]
Given the quality of answers to questions that I'm used to by computer manufacturer "product experts" online... it's really unlikely that that's actually the case.
It is much worse because Lenovo programmed the BIOS to lock the system so if you try to toggle it to AHCI mode with an EFI variable from EFIshell, it immediately sets itself back to RAID mode.
RAID mode? WTF? Why would they be using RAID mode on a machine with a single SSD, and according to the other posts here, deliberately make it nearly impossible to change?
Maybe because good-old-IDE or even AHCI was too simple and open.
I have been a long time ThinkPad user and recently purchased my latest ThinkPad T460p. Sadly it has some issues, the latest NVidia drivers don't work on the device but I'm forced to use the 1 year old driver that Lenovo provides in their packages. Figuring this out took my several days of trouble shooting (only dx9 was affected).
Also the system fan is constantly running. I went to their support site and the online support is not available in my country and the "contact support" system doesn't/didn't work (opened some empty box in the website). Super frustrating.
As much I hate to admit it, the ThinkPad is no longer what it was back in the IBM era.
Combined with stories about vendor lock in. I'm saddened to say that this shall be the last ThinkPad/Lenovo that I'm purchasing.
I bought a T460p a few months back, and while it's a very good laptop for the price it had a very annoying problem with the Trackpad that would occasionally just stop working after suspending the laptop (and only doing a cold reboot with all power cords removed would fix this). Sadly it took Lenovo two weeks to send a technician with a replacement part to fix the issue, contrary to their "24 hour target" advertised on the website. A few years ago customer support was much more responsive, so it seems that they are indeed trying to cut costs in that area.
That said, I also use a X1 Carbon, which runs great with Linux and doesn't have any problems at all concerning hardware and drivers (graphics card, mobile broadband, two external monitors via DP all works flawlessly and the battery lasts 6-8 hours under normal use). I'm confident that the Linux support for the T460p will improve as well as developers have time to write better drivers, after all it's still pretty new hardware (barely six months old).
Honestly Dell does Ubuntu pre-installed and therefore its XPS and Precision models never give this kind of bullshit uphill, even if you don't buy the Ubuntu version. It's now my go-to vendor, simply because I consider any vendor which does not do full testing on Linux, and sells any hardware that doesn't fully support it, as suspect and not worth bothering with. I'm sad to see that Lenovo is now in that camp.
One of my co-workers bought a Linux laptop from Dell, and while the Linux capabilities worked, he spent several weeks working with their support to get the laptop re-imaged. The first time they returned it it had no system image. Apparently their service depot doesn't have system images for their version of Linux. The support rep had to actually intercept the laptop on the second trip from the depot to reinstall Linux.
I'm running an ISO keyboard on a Dell Precision as we "speak". Recall you don't have to buy the Ubuntu pre-installed version because it's the same hardware. I retro-installed mine on a UK-keyboard Windows Precision M3800 (now superseded by the 5510). And it works perfectly. If I were to buy one now I'd just go for the 13-XPS as the infinity display is big enough, although a fully kitted out Precision 5510 with Xeon, 32GB RAM and Nvidia quadro is mighty tempting but we're talking 3000 USD (2150 GBP) with 1TB SSD.
I have to assume you're referencing Apple, because otherwise, apart from maybe Lenovo, for a good quality decent price machine with at least a semblance of design attention, Dell has been pretty good for something like 8-10 years now (HP: are you listening?). Dell also has a long history of access to and enthusiasm for cutting edge components.
If however what you're lamenting is the idea that we have to look somewhere other than Apple these days, then I have to agree with you. Their lineup is truly forgettable in the above-starbucks market, tragic considering the history of the macbook. Maybe just maybe that'll change in October, but then we'll still have to deal with the iOSification of OSX to the detriment of developers. Also I'm a big mech keyboard fan and the rumoured oled bar function key replacement idea does NOT work for me unless they open source it (haha).
Agreed, and I'm a long-time ThinkPad advocate with a stack of older models in my closet going back to the R31. I've always thought they had superior keyboards and pointing devices, and every one of my old ThinkPads runs Arch beautifully. (Granted, I didn't bother installing X on the R31.) Given the opportunity to pick out a new laptop for work last week, I passed them by, and that was before I was aware of this news. They've done too many questionable things lately, and lost my trust.
Lenovo has lost my business. The ThinkPad is not for Linux any more.
For work, I just ordered a Dell Precision, the one that supports Ubuntu. We'll see how it turns out; I'll chime in on the next HN laptop thread. (Seems like we have one every week or so.) It certainly looks better than Lenovo at this point.
Idk of the reliability, but I recommend looking at the recent build quality of HP laptops in person. It's pretty impressive. Still need to see that they're good for the long run, but they look like they're getting better.
Also Dells being finicky? Never heard of that, but wouldn't doubt it either. I think the XPS line works well with Linux. I know someone who used Ubuntu exclusively on it for a long time.
My Dell impression is anecdata. A company of a friend of mine bought a bunch of XPS 13. Out of a dozen laptops, only two were not RMA'd. The issues were not the same either. Keyboards with stuck keys, dead pixel strips on screens, screens that were too dim even on the highest setting. The overall impression was really not good.
>> When my x1 dies, I think I'll just continue and get the then current generation x1...
They changed the finish a bit so that carbon-fiber texture is gone, and they removed the physical volume button above the function keys, but at least there's proper function keys now (unlike the third gen, I think).
Congrats, it looks like a sweet machine. I have a 2nd gen one. The one with the clickpad and no proper function keys. Got it after a 1st gen one was stolen. I'd trade it for the previous version if I could. A couple of months after I bought it, the 3rd gen reverted the idiotic clickpad and oled function key ideas.
The bad side in disguise is that these machines are tough. They usually last five years of daily travel and daily usage, so I'm still three or four years out of a decent trackpad.
I've been happy for a few years with my 17" System76 laptop. Came with Ubuntu preinstalled, and has worked fine through two major OS version upgrades. Really fast boot with the OS on an SSD drive.
Ha, same problem here with an ideapad z500 and Linux Mint, latest NVidia drivers prevent my laptop from booting. Now I have to resort to XServer and adjusting brightness via the command line: xrandr --output LVDS1 --brightness 1.0
The reason I was looking at the Lenovo 710s instead of the thinkpads was specifically because the 710s included a nice intel GPU (iris 540) and not a nvidia chip which hugely complicates power management, drivers, etc.
For whatever reason, the device only exposes some sort of RAID controller to the OS, and for whatever reason, there's no working option for exposing a more standard AHCI interface instead. The problem is that Linux doesn't (yet) have a driver for that RAID controller.
Okay, great. Linux doesn't yet support particular piece of hardware. News at 11.
Just like usual, if you want odd hardware to work on Linux, you'll have to write some drivers. That's just how it is. This is nothing new or scandalous. The reasons why Lenovo doesn't support AHCI don't matter. They don't, so now somebody must write a driver for what they do support. Once that happens, nobody will complain anymore. It's that simple. Nothing is being locked with Secure Boot; nothing is being locked with crypto; there is no DRM at play. If you want hardware support, write a driver.
As for all the Lenovo-bashing going on here... My personal experience with my new Thinkpad P50 has been overwhelmingly positive. It's working on Gentoo Linux entirely: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Lenovo_ThinkPad_P50
It seems absurd because you complete glossed over the most important part: " and for whatever reason, there's no working option for exposing a more standard AHCI interface instead."
This isn't linux's fault for not supporting some non-standard raid driver, this is lenovos fault for not allowing users to change the bios settings to non-raid.
Also, just because you are been using a Thinkpad sucessfully (which is largely been immune from the issues we are talking about compared to the rest of lenovo line), to use that to dismiss the very real issues regarding lenovo's recent moves is disingenuous at best.
> This isn't linux's fault for not supporting some non-standard raid driver,
> this is lenovos fault for not allowing users to change the bios settings to non-raid.
Lenovo made a computer that exposes hardware to the OS for which Linux does not yet have drivers. They could have exposed a more standard interface, but they didn't. I guess this is their fault, okay. But again, what's the big deal? What's next? You'll be upset when Synaptics releases a new touchpad with a different protocol, for which Linux doesn't yet have a driver? You'll scream and complain, "they could have supported the other protocol! they could have unlocked it! it was just a few bits inside the internal SPI flash!" Okay. But they didn't. Now write a driver if you want it to work.
I'd be upset if they used some kind of crypto secure boot situation to lock down the device. This seems very far from that, however.
> Also, just because you are been using a Thinkpad sucessfully
> (which is largely been immune from the issues we are talking
> about compared to the rest of lenovo line), to use that to
> dismiss the very real issues regarding lenovo's recent moves
> is disingenuous at best.
I didn't mean to dismiss anything except for some comments I've seen in which people said Thinkpads are awful on Linux. Thought I'd chime in to offer a differing experience.
Yes, Thinkpads have traditionally had the best linux hardware support of all laptops, ever since there were x86 laptops (the easiest installs were thinkpads, and toshiba, early on).
Now, this piece of hardware removes support for the standard way to access the hard drive. Why did they do that? Hardware engineer couldn't fix a glitch in a new chipset in time to fix the issue in time to ship? Exceedingly unlikely. You only change those chips when you have to, because of cost or design constraints, and Lenovo is shipping other, similar hardware that does work with standard storage drivers.
Someone (one person!) managed to flash the BIOS to add AHCI support, but certainly I don't need to point out that this level of tinkering is equivalent to a crypto secure boot situation for well over 99% of laptop-buyers. That is, they would not be able to defeat either.
Now, a large portion of those buyers are not even aware of linux, so it's very easy for them not to care. Some people take umbrage to the argument-from-not-caring (I've got mine! My video plays fine! etc.), not because you have shown that their position is wrong, but because it seems to them that you are arguing that you understand that they are screwed, you are not, and "too bad for you".
Interestingly, despite Thinkpads being the best at running Linux over the years, they never officially supported it. At some point they began cracking down on it.
At last job, we had to wipe machines back to the version of Windows that came with them in order to get Lenovo to honor the NBD support we paid for, even when it was obviously not a software glitch (displays dying or DVD drives not reading discs in any OS). We kept a couple spare hard drives around with vanilla Windows installs for this reason.
We were pretty excited when Dell started shipping their Developer models. Told Lenovo to pound sand when it came time to refresh.
ThinkPad and IdeaPad are notionally just two product lines with different target markets, but everything I've seen related to them suggests that the difference is more like buying from two separate companies.
Interestingly, technical support for ThinkPad still appears to be provided by IBM, which is pretty nice. When parts come in the mail they have the IBM security tape on it. It's got that old school professional enterprise feeling.
The problem is the compatible hardware is in there, the driver exists, it's just disabled in bios. If you hack the bios to flip the bios setting linux installs fine.
I don't think many would care, but the lenovo 710s has some pretty unique hardware. Nice intel CPU, nice intel GPU (iris 540), and a nice matte screen.
The Dell XPS 13 is similar, but to get the nice cpu/gpu you have to get a shiny/reflective screen that cuts your battery life almost in half (22 to 12 hours).
Somebody managed to circumvent the problem on a Yoga 900 by flashing a new BIOS which allowed access to extra configurations. Some soldering required. The details start at https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/Yoga-900-13ISK... Check the link to imgur in that post. Not for the faint of heart. There are other posts with extra details from the same author in the next pages of the forum.
Get a Developer Edition XPS 13 from Dell instead, comes with Linux pre-installed. I have one and they are awesome, if manufacturers support Linux they get my $.
I had nothing but trouble with my XPS 13 developer edition laptop. Ended up sending it back on the same day I got it. The issues I experienced were seemingly widespread too, with a lot of consumers complaining about the same problems on the forums.
There were incredibly irritating keyboard debounce issues (and yes, I was running the latest BIOS version available at the time) and there were also issues with the touchpad glitching out (messing with the mouse cursor position) with X restarting every now and then due to the broken touchpad driver. Really disappointing for a laptop with Linux preinstalled, and I've avoided Dell ever since.
To top it all off, it became painfully obvious that the Linux DEs weren't able to do a seamless job of supporting a high-DPI screen (I got the 4K edition) or multitouch touchscreen and interfaces like the login screen were unreadably tiny. I know this got fixed in a more recent version of Ubuntu, but I don't understand why Dell ever shipped the laptop they did.
GNOME 3 on Debian Jessie works decently well with high-DPI screens - I'm using it now on the 3K 2015 version of the XPS 13.
Some controls won't scale up (Java Swing is particularly miniscule), otherwise it just works compared to most other desktop environments I tried last year.
I bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon (most recent gen) and really regret it for a great many reasons. Wish I had gone for the XPS. Actually what swayed me was the very slightly larger screen.
I think you can get 15" models from Dell under their "Project Sputnik" program too, well worth following Barton's blog for news on that: http://bartongeorge.io/
I bought the normal 15" XPS with Windows recently. Ubuntu 16.04 has gone on it fairly well. It does sound like that is the first version that works correctly, though; you can find a lot of complaints on the net about older versions having serious issues. Ubuntu can't seem to control the backlight, but "xbacklight" does, so it's not a driver thing. I presume other similarly recent distros with similar drivers will work. (I wanted a Windows install for gaming.) For this post I just tried the webcam for the first time; as reviews note it's sort of a nostril-cam and I also noticed if you're typing your fingers loom large, but I don't use it much. I haven't tried the Thunderbolt or "true" USB3, because I don't have any hardware for the fancy ports. I did get the HDMI out to work in Linux. I haven't screwed with the dual-graphics card setup at all, and it seems to work, in the sense that it isn't causing me any trouble. I haven't directly timed the battery but it's getting at least decent life. (I also pre-emptively replaced the wireless card with https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0167N9R8E/ref=oh_aui_deta... , so I guess I can't promise the broadcom works out of the box.)
I did have the motherboard die on this three weeks in, though, which has been frustrating. When it works it's a nice system, a nice counter to the trend of everything being made out of cheap plastic. You can get nicer specs for the same price but it'll be a physically cheaper machine.
I've actually had more trouble with the Windows side in terms of drivers. The parathetically-aforementioned pre-emptive replacement of the wireless was on the advice of a coworker who had trouble with the card in Windows. When you turn off the RAID so you can install Linux, the NVMe drivers in Windows become unstable. Some people apparently install the Samsung 950 Pro drivers, which can then have its own problems because of hardware mismatch; I accidentally resolved this problem by purchasing a Samsung 950 Pro anyhow. (I wanted a nice flash drive but didn't want to spend the $$$ upgrading all the other things in the pre-packaged configurations. Plus they don't say what their flash drive is, it's probably not as good.) Also it seems to help if you remove the Dell drivers for the headphone port and revert to the reference drivers, as otherwise the machine can hang when you plug headphones in under load. Which is sorta dumb. I recommend making the first thing you do with the system to build a Windows 10 install image and then make a clean install after turning off the RAID, but be sure to bundle the drivers on the Dell webpage onto the install media, particularly the wireless ones. (I didn't know this at the time, but apparently Windows 10 has licenses stored on the motherboard now, so you don't have to hassle with license keys. It just installs.) Apparently there's some way with fighting through the RAID setting change to repair the system but a clean install is nice for other reasons. (Not too much crapware, but, still.)
I will agree that the previous is a potentially frustrating set of issues for either OS for a brand new, high-end laptop. I'm used to beating my laptops into submission anyhow since I run my own quirky XMonad install and other such things, so getting this all slick was just par for the course for me. Assuming this stays working I'm quite happy with it (I'm even really liking the keyboard which a lot of people complain about, so YMMV), but it certainly could have been a nicer experience.
I've got a 3443CTO X1 Carbon from a few years back. Decent build quality, but low res screen and only 4GB of RAM (was all that I could get when I bought it).
My "upgrade" is an XPS 9350 for 2.5x the price. Windows 10 still doesn't handle high DPI screens well, and until recent updates there were issues with the Broadcom AC wifi card. For Macbook Pro money, I expect better. There's really nowhere to go for power users who need powerful laptops under 1.5kg.
As another anecdote, I have purchased six X1 Carbons for staff in the past year or so and they have been great. The staff all travel a lot and they appreciate how light weight it is. The only machine-specific support I have had to provide so far was the SMM BIOS vuln. updates.
Despite that, I am making new purchases with Dell mostly because of price and service. Check out the Latitude E7470 in comparison to the X1.
I just purchased a Lenovo X1 Yoga with an OLED screen (very similar to the X1 Carbon, but with a touch screen). I went back and forth between the XPS 13 and the X1, but the slightly bigger OLED screen, better keyboard, and touchpoint swayed me. Hoping I don't regret my decision..
The screen itself mainly, is incredibly dull. it has a matt covering that i thought I wanted, but turns out i don't. When compared in indirect sunlight with the mRBP i can't read the text in a terminal. Practically unusable in certain situations. Often I like to work sitting outside on my balcony and couldn't.
Battery life is quite poor despite considerable tweaking. Rarely get more than 2-3 hours of reasonable (low % cpu) use. Disable WiFi and decrease screen brightness and i can get 9-10 on an aircraft on a long flight. I fell it is getting worse over time too.
I've also had WiFi driver issues with suspend and resume on linux AND windows. Assumed it was just Ubuntu and their horrendous lack of QA for hardware. My wife also has the same issue on the Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 on win 10. I just rmmod and insmod the wifi kernel module to repair. PITA.
i had similar trackpad issues, these have been resolved.
Keyboard is way way too soft/shallow. Could be an issue on most laptops these days.
Speakers are on the base of the unit and are incredibly quiet. Quiet to the point where if you have a gentle breeze whip up you completely lose the sound.
Considering the cost I'm not impressed. The screen kills it for me. even glare reflecting off windows wipes it out at max brightness.
I had similar issues with the screen on a HP ProBook I bought last year. The matte screen was way dimmer than my Dell M6500's. When I sent the laptop in for warranty service on the screen (unrelated), the replacement screen was even dimmer.
Next time I can afford an arbitrary laptop, it will me another Dell Mobile Workstation like the M6500.
1) Great battery life, lousy cpu, nice matte screen, not much ram available.
2) Half the battery life, nice cpu (i7-6560), nice GPU (iris 540), and a 3200x1800 reflective screen that reduces your battery life from 22 hours to 12.
The Yoga 710s (sadly with the broken BIOS that prevents linux from installing) is much like the theoretical XPS 13 without the power sucking 3200x1800 display.
So I was just looking for a decent laptop, decent build quality, and wanted to avoid the pain/suffering relating to trying to get nvidia working with a laptop that sleeps, switches to the internal intel on battery, and has some stupid system for moving pixels from the nvidia chip through the intel chip to get to the frame buffer.
Supposedly Intel's NVMe variant of Rapid Storage Technology is currently unsupported on Linux. I find this puzzling because conventional RST doesn't really do anything that matters to the OS other than changing the AHCI controller's id, so Linux "support" is trivial. But conventional RST relies on the PCIe target being on-board and, with NVMe, the target is the SSD itself, so I don't fully understand what the newer NVMe does.
My laptop won't even POST with RST on, so I can't meaningfully experiment.
So, add a distro's keys (to the firmware) or use a distro signed with the default (MS) key.
Or get those Linux community to organize, and establish some body to create, and secure, keys for Linux that will be installed by default alongside MSs.
As someone who suffered from at least a couple BIOS-based malware back on Windows PCs back in the day, I'm all for securing the bootloaders...
A centralized key is not secure. A secure key is not centralized. If you want any security, the computer owner must be the only person allowed to install keys on the boot sequence - what is the exact opposite of what MS mandates.
>Or get to learn something about key management. A centralized key is not secure. A secure key is not centralized.
A centralized key IS secure, just not AS secure as a not private key.
(That's theoritically: in practice it can be even safer than a private key, because most end users are incompetent in managing their keys much more than the central entity would usually be).
And it's wrong to think it as a key in the sense of a physical key. It actually used as a signature.
You can't have "private signatures" because the very purpose of a signature is to verify that the thing it signs is signed by a specific (and in the case of operating systems, central: the vendor) entity.
An OS the user signs itself is worthless, as the OS data he signed could have come from anywhere or tampered, etc, before the signing.
"of course Apple and Sun can sell computers, but not to the two most lucrative markets for computers, namely, the corporate desktop and the home computer."
- Joel Spolsky, 2004
Well, with around 8-10% today (9.6% according to StatCounter), Apple which targets higher-end, higher-margins gets most of the profits from the home computer market, at least in the US.
It is also doing quite well recently in the corporate desktop (see IBM adopting Macs, etc). Heck, they almost dominate the "startup founder/employee" desktop, as well as the "university student" desktop.
>gets most of the profits from the home computer market, at least in the US.
Do you have a source for this? I know it's the case with their phones, but they also have a much larger market share there. It's hard for me to believe they get "most of the profits" from the PC market with their minuscule share, especially when their computers are competitively priced.
Source? It has been reported again and again, along with the relevant stats. Examples:
Apple sells 5% of the world’s PCs and takes home 45% of the profit. (1)
During the recent third quarter, Apple commanded a 7.5 percent share of the computer market, up from 6.9 percent a year ago, IDC said. That was enough to move Apple up to No. 4 in market share for the computer market, pushing past Acer, which is now No. 5. (...) Each of the top five personal computer makers suffered a decline in total shipments, but four — Lenovo, HP, Dell and Apple — all captured a larger share of a shrinking market. (2)
* Apple's total share of the global PC market grew to 7.4 percent in the first quarter of calendar 2016, good for fourth place globally, according to IDC. That's up from 6.7 percent in the same period a year ago. (3)*
In fact Apple has such high per-PC revenues that it’s actually now the third-biggest PC maker by revenue – excluding Dell, because we don’t know what Dell’s revenues are, because it is privately owned. (4)
They might be misguided. Until there's an official announcement one way or another, I wouldn't pay too much attention to some random Lenovo customer service guy.
Right, but there isn't going to be an official announcement, unless a hundred thousand people jump to premature conclusions and bring out their pitchforks. I agree that it's not terribly smart to draw a conclusion at this point in time, but it's potentially more malicious, if we don't.
Regardless of whether such an agreement exists, and regardless of whether it's a secret if it does exist, I still have my pitchfork out. Lenovo had already lost my good will for their various other shenanigans over the last couple of years, but locking down the machine in a way that makes it impossible to install an alternative OS has decisively lost them my business.
Seriously. If this does turn out to be intentional on Microsoft's part, then there goes every last shred of trust and goodwill they've spent the last 10 years rebuilding.
(and, honestly, were finally succeeding at, to the point where I'm very close to willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here: how the hell could the benefits of such a thing come anywhere near to outweighing the amount of damage it would do?)
Meh. For me, the last drop was "You WANT the X, admit it! (Not like you have a choice, we force-upgraded your computer anyway, no matter what you chose)" This is just Business As Usual.
> Lenovo for example confirmed that they singed an agreement with Microsoft for this.
If true, it's illegal product tying, and those who signed such "agreement" are violating antitrust law. Someone should sue them until they stop doing this. Lenovo are infamous for refusing to refund Windows tax until brought to court, but this is a new low for them.
It is a different situation, IMHO. The guy purchased a Sony laptop with a Windows license, and pretended that by refusing the EULA he was entitled to getting the cost of the Windows license refunded. Sony refused, offering instead that he returned the laptop for a full refund. The guy refused and filled the lawsuit.
Preinstalled software you can (probably) quite easily uninstall is slightly different though. I personally don't care what the computer comes with, as long as I can reformat and reinstall a new OS.
This is probably the standard "firmware is sending different data to different OSes", which has existed since forever. Or maybe it's just a shitty firmware bug or even a kernel bug.
However, I'm glad this is making this type of fuss. It means bad PR for Lenovo if they don't do any Linux QA (as they mostly never did). Good.
Have a look lenovo forums [1] (also linked prominently from original article), where OP has following to say:
I am attempting to install ubuntu 16.04 on my yoga 900.
The bios can see the 512 gb samsung hard drive and so can Windows.
The ubuntu installer can not see it at all.
...and first person to reply adds:
I have the same issue with the 900S model.
I have tried the newest kernel 4.6 but linux doesn't
even list the pci express device in lspci.
So no, positively not the 3.2.x kernel to blame here.
Right. Thanks for that. I am reacting to the claims that it's "locked by Microsoft". This looks to be missing Linux support for an Intel device. Sad, but not unusual.
This article could certainly use some clarification. I bought a Lenovo Yoga 500 two weeks ago and had no problems whatsoever with installing Ubuntu 16.04 after setting the UEFI to 'legacy' and nuking the complete drive after making a disk image backup for warranty purposes.
Did I dodge a bullet here? It came with Windows 10, but perhaps it wasn't this 'signature edition'.
That's a total different thing, I did the same with my Lenovo G50-80 laptop, but the problem with the model in the thread is the Signature Edition and the BIOS lock, it's different from normal UEFI stuff.
That Linux lacks drivers for something and Microsoft somehow got the blame for it as part of some grand conspiracy? Certainly predictable for /r/linux. I thought HN was better than that.
Microsoft has already used SecureBoot to <s>lock out Linux</s> 'offer better security' on their phones and tablets. Is it really such a stretch for people to be afraid that they're going to require desktop/laptop vendors to leave SecureBoot on in the future? (and conveniently only recognize the key for Windows?)
Probably our best saving grace against that is how rapidly mobile is cannibalizing the desktop/laptop market. Probably not even worth the antitrust probes in Europe to attempt that anymore.
But I don't blame people for being immensely skeptical given Microsoft's actions on mobile. Best case, we're paranoid, PCs end up fine. Worst case, PCs are locked down, and "I told you so" won't help reverse it.
Yes, I do think it's a stretch considering their agreement with OEMs requires OEMs allow for diabling SecureBoot and require allowing users to enroll their own keys.
The PC market and mobile phone markets are very different, with a huge precedent already being set that mobile ARM devices are locked down. Are you equally upset that iPhones and virtually all Android devices also have locked down bootloaders?
On top of this, Microsoft cross signs the keys used to sign the Linux bootloaders so that they work out of the box even on computers that have only the default MS keys enrolled.
Considering that most people fail to grasp those two salient points when presenting their conspiracy theories... yes... I feel comfortable dismissing most of them out of hand.
> their agreement with OEMs requires OEMs allow for diabling SecureBoot
Nobody ever goes from one extreme to the other. Restrictions are added a little at a time to minimize the outrage.
Look at Gatekeeper on OSX. "Oh it's just an option", then it's enabled by default. "Oh you can just turn it off." Now it automatically turns itself back on every 30 days. Their next move will likely be to require all apps to be signed. Again, if I'm wrong, great! As someone who releases OSX software but won't pay Apple for the privilege, I hope I am.
Further, you don't always have to go 100% restrictive to achieve the same effect. Look at web browsers and self-signing certificates. Sure, you can still accept and install them, but it's been made such a pain that nobody can really pull off a self-signed website.
What serious OSX developer is going to release unsigned software that requires people to go in and turn Gatekeeper off every 30 days? It might as well be mandatory for all the choice developers looking to earn a living on that platform have these days.
> Are you equally upset that iPhones and virtually all Android devices also have locked down bootloaders?
Yes! There's not really much of a market for alternative phone operating systems; but even still, I buy Android because I can sideload regular applications without hacking ("jailbreaking") my own property.
Lenovo again. As if the recent thinkpad scandal was not enough.
Incidentally I know of another company that went to bed with MS and it didn't work out very well - enter Nokia.
I would love a resource that related the various notions, expressions and idioms of society in the way that you just did. The sophistication of this association is well beyond anything machine learning can do. Except for maybe to crawl the internet and determine it was a relevant association stated by some human somewhere.
The quote is attributed to Napoleon, who surely saw his fair share of incompetent generals. It should really be called Napoleons Razor to fall in line with Occam.
We're assuming Microsoft is behaving according to their extensively-documented (including original MS source documents in court cases) past malicious behaviour, not assuming malice in the absence of previous malice.
The kids these days don't realise just how much of what's fucked up about PCs these days is directly Microsoft fuckery.
The Lenovo guy did not say it was a secret.
And it's not posted in a lost forum somewhere, but in response to a review on a very popular sites on which Lenovo sells a lot. Seems legit to me.
I have a recent X260 running Fedora 24 and I'm very happy with it, and with Fedoras support. I use both smartcard and 4G data module with it. Only thing I don't use is the fingerprint reader.
Only sad bit is that I had to disable SecureBoot to run VirtualBox. I would have happily signed the VirtualBox kernel modules if it wasn't for Lenovo missing a small detail in the implementation of the UEFI spec that enables users to write their own MOK.
I said I was running Fedora 24 on an X260, implied that it's on metal.
However, I also want to run VirtualBox inside Fedora, because my job requires me to have a Windows VM. And VirtualBox has its own kernel modules, with SecureBoot they need to be signed. Unfortunately the poor UEFI implementation Lenovo has provided won't let me enter my own MOKs into the UEFI because coincidentally that little write call is missing.
I dunno, tinfoil hat surgically implanted under my scalp, it feels like they're not making it easy for Linux, when the Linux community is doing their best to adapt to SecureBoot.
Edit: And just to be clear, I did of course disable SecureBoot at this discovery but it was sad to do so because I had hoped to see how well Linux had adapted to this new tech that came out several years ago and was heralded as a Linux blocker. ;)
I've been leaning that way lately, having only just tried kvm virtualization on a server at home.
The discovery of kimchi made me try KVM and it's a very nice web gui for home use, or laptop use. So yes I might just replace VirtualBox with kvm soon. I just have no experience with the guest drivers for Windows provided by libvirt.
But Linux doesn't care and lets them run. Unless you mean those on the Windows side. In which case - why does virtualbox honor bios settings of the host machine?
No, it doesn't, at least on Fedora[0]: “When Secure Boot is enabled, the EFI operating system boot loaders, the Fedora kernel, and all kernel modules must be signed with a private key and authenticated with the corresponding public key.”
Just out of curiosity, what's the rationale for MS & Lenovo to do this, why to risk PR? The number of people wanting to install Linux is marginal and they are already "on the wrong side".
I guess they just wanted to lock out Windows 7/8. They don't gain anything by denying Linux to a few people. But preventing that the buyer can downgrade to Windows 7 fits exactly to their strategy and makes sense for Microsoft.
Also, an agreement to lock out Linux might not be legal from an antitrust perspective, whereas an agreement to restrict usage to the current version of the OS is much less critical.
The app store, Cortana and Edge (with Bing as standard search engine) are closely tied to Windows 10. That's where revenue will come from in the future, not from licenses.
This failure to innovate presumably includes touch screens, Windows Hello biometric sign-in, running sandboxed apps from a Windows Store, integrated Cortana AI, Notification Center, cloud integration via OneDrive, Continuum mode, Device Guard, Universal apps that work across PCs, tablets, phones and the Xbox One, Xbox app for streaming live games to a PC or Tablet, touch-optimized Office apps on Windows, iOS and Android, and half a dozen other things.
So I understand that these features took a great deal of engineering effort, but except for sandboxing I have zero interest in any of them. So maybe it's innovation, but I don't see a whole lot of innovation that I care about. In particular, many of these features deal with touch interfaces, which I have no desire ever to use for serious work. And why would I ever run Windows if I didn't have to for work?
It would still be useful to distinguish between innovations that hundreds of millions of people use -- including me -- and your personal requirements. Sadly, the whole IT world does not actually revolve around those ;-)
Sure, and I'm careful not to impose my value judgements about whether an innovation is actually interesting to the question of whether it's an innovation. But personally I find that improving touch interfaces is this decade's version of adding a wheel to the mouse.
You said Linux was "a real threat, especially with MS failing to innovate."
This was an unrestricted claim that ignored a massive amount of Microsoft innovation. I pointed out that you were wrong and now you're quibbling about another of your personal opinions. Why make the same mistake twice?
Seems to me that the whole Microsoft Windows ecosystem -- across Azure, PCs, games consoles, smartphones, and iOS and Android devices -- shows far more innovation than Linux.
If you want to provide a list of Linux innovation to compare with my incomplete list above, I'd be interested to see it.
Be even better if you could address the whole market, without restricting it to your personal peccadilloes.
> You said Linux was "a real threat, especially with MS failing to innovate."
You're quoting somebody else there, friend. I jumped on this particular subthread because I wanted to point out that your list of innovations boils down to "Microsoft improved the user interface for touch devices."
> your personal peccadilloes
Peccadilloes? I do not think that means what you think it means.
> I jumped on this particular subthread because I wanted to point out that your list of innovations boils down to "Microsoft improved the user interface for touch devices."
No, it doesn't. I use most of them on a desktop PC that doesn't include touch. Also, cloud and cross-platform capabilities go beyond touch.
> Peccadilloes? I do not think that means what you think it means.
I know what it means. And in the UK, it's not specifically sexual in connotation. However, I did spell it wrong ;-)
Today in 2016, Linux is the superior platform for both user-friendliness and stability. It is easier to use and install on a wider variety of hardware. The old belief that Windows is "easier" is deprecated, and it is time to change the conversation to reflect that truth.
I think it should be considered that the vast majority of Windows systems are pre-installed and pre-configured out of the box. If this were the case with Linux, there might be an argument. Most Windows users couldn't easily install, configure and use, e.g. Server Enterprise Edition. Likewise, I doubt Gentoo would be a common candidate for ease of use. The various *buntus have really come a long way in regard to user friendliness, maybe far enough.
That was part of my reasoning. Installing Windows is a huge pain in the ass compared to installing Linux. If you need a service pack you have to go to their website, the download links are always difficult to find and buried under walls of text that nobody cares to read. And there's always a chance that the download link simply won't work for some stupid bureaucratic reason, such as "Use Windows Update". And if Windows Update fails, you're really SOL.
In Linux, if you're missing something it's a simple matter of "apt-get install something" and it almost always works. The rate of failure for Windows updates and installing proper drivers and software in windows is much higher.
And Linux is far more likely to work out of the box on most hardware. Windows installs never have more drivers available than what ships on the CD/DVD. With Linux Net Installs, as long as your Ethernet is supported, and it probably is supported, the rest of the system will be up-to-date.
I have recently installed Windows 7, Windows 10, and Linux, I've used each for a number of months. Linux was the easiest and friendliest. I've been using Windows for years so I'm not a newbie, it's a terrible operating system.
Money, lots of money. Microsoft gives away special deals for OEM versions of Windows that cost manufacturers of devices peanuts in comparison to the ordinary pricing. I've heard figures like $20 per Windows license.
So people have suggested in the past that Microsoft might ask for favours in return, basically telling OEMs that if they do not comply they might loose cheap OEM versions or even all access to OEM version of Windows, which would make their products unfit for competition.
Other people have suggested that this would be illegal, that Microsoft would never do something as anti-competitive like that, and that Microsoft just gives away nicely priced OEM versions of Windows to manufacturers because they are really nice guys and want disseminate their products even if they don't earn much from them.
By "might", you mean of course "repeatedly demonstrated in court, and we have piles of source documents substantiating the claim submitted in discovery".
It's not that users would want to install Linux (historically, they don't know or care about the OS), it's that a manufacturer might want to either to reduce costs or differentiate their products. In today's browser-focused world that's not too much of a stretch to envision happening at least on some low-end/consumer devices... for a start. Want to see what that looks like for Microsoft? See Microsoft's mobile market share...
The year of Linux on the desktop was 2007. That's when netbooks first showed up, and manufacturers put them out with Linux on because an XP license cost so much relative to the cost of the gadget. This was the first time MS had to treat Linux as an actual direct competitor.
True. And Microsoft responded with a ULCPC (Ultra Low Cost PC) version of XP that cost them $11-$16 or so -- which they could easily get back by installing crapware.
This left Linux with no cost advantage on parts, or a negative cost advantage, if you added more crapware.
The much higher costs of shipping Linux then killed off the Linux netbooks.
The higher costs included extra testing and parts qualification, extra shipping and advertising costs, and, in particular, massively increased support costs. (One Linux user support call wiped out the profit margin on multiple sales.)
It is not gibberish. They put it in quotes to imply that it is not literally true that they are on the wrong side, but that for the purposes of Microsofts efforts they are on the wrong side in the sense that they are not Microsoft customers and are not likely to be swayed by this or anything else so they are not worth targeting for Microsoft.
So the only real outcome from this would at first glance appear to be to antagonise people who won't consider their product either way and cause bad PR.
The question is if there's any other/better rationale.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Guess it was my impulse reaction as a long-time Lenovo + Linux user / dev. Should've asked before jumping the gun too soon. Sorry, Yaggo.
Microsoft wants to kill "old" hardware and force you to use only the one they've certified, so they don't have to support 2 years old CPU and GPU, backport changes to between Windows 7 and botnet10. If they can force hardware manufacturers to lock hardware to only certain software, and apparently they can, they won't need to port drivers back to archaic to Windows 7 or 8. You will be forced to use 10.
When was it okay to prevent me to do what I want to something I own ? Absolutely never ever. Region locking of DVDs, DRMs of all sorts, smartphones locking are plain, shameless abuse.
It's however particularly unacceptable to lock down what used to be open.
Is worth saying that for most things, you buy them in the state they're in - there's no "right" to openness, as much as we might want it. Just because you own a house, doesn't mean you can just put a 6 storey extension in the garden.
Then tension is that we've almost always been able to install Linux on standard Windows machines and so have gotten used to it being open, but I'd be loathed to say (if the manufacturers have decided to make it tricky deliberately or just not thinking) we have a fundamental right to do it.
But there is a right not to buy this stuff and a right to tell other people not to buy it, too. There is also a right to tell the vendors how much you abhor them for selling such closed products and there is a right to tell journalists or other people why buying closed products is a really bad idea. And you have a right to lobby to make producing/buying closed products socially unacceptable.
Exactly. If you want openness then tell the manufacturers you want openness and people can put their money where their mouths are, however, I still don't believe expecting it as default when exceptionally few people (relatively speaking) ever have or will, is an entirely rational thought process.
Interestingly alcometer locks on cars and speed limiters are very rare. Except for minorities, like truck or taxi drivers. Small groups of voters, so politicians can do what they wish with them.
Seems like it's "okay" when you can get away with it. But not okay when large group of people get some slight inconvenience.
Car speed limiter is completely trivial, cheap and potentially life saving.
"Most Japanese domestic market vehicles are limited to 180 km/h (112 mph) or 190 km/h (118 mph)." Almost twice the common maximum speed limit (100km/h).
> Why is it OK to lock down smartphones, TV devices, consoles, but not OK for PCs?
IMHO, it is not OK to lock down things you own. I have been a victim. I bought an AppleTV v2 and a planned obsolescence by Apple and Google rendered it useless (with a YouTube API version requirement).
PCs are special in that, they are general purpose devices and not appliances. If you are using it as an appliance, chances are, you are not interested in running another operating system on it.
It's part of the PC culture, and the Thinkpad/Lenovo heritage as ideal Linux laptops. But you're right, it's no different from what Apple/LG/Samsung/etc. do.
It's not ok, but the way most of us use our devices makes it less ok for PCs because we have far more reason to insist on our own software there.
E.g. with an unlocked Android device, I will typically at most install a different rom that's largely the same as the stock rom. Various small enhancements but nothing I can't live without.
But a PC that can't run Linux is entirely useless to me.
I hope I never have to deal with a locked down TV. Region-locked DVDs are bad enough.
Once, just before Blu-ray was a thing, I encountered a "HD DVD" which was a data DVD containing a Windows Media file. This used the embedded DRM licensing system to call home to a server when you played it, and refused to run if your source IP was not in the US.
Something like tradition. The IBM PC has been an "open" system since the late 70's. Tablets etc (palmtops!) started appearing in the 90's, and were walled gardens from the get go.
That was the whole thing about PCs - if my memory of Cringley's "Triumph of the Nerds" serves, the genesis of this category was IBM rushing to a market where other "closed" vendors such as Apple were already established. It wasn't that PCs were open "by design" but more that they did things quickly and gathered other vendors "off the shelf" notably Microsoft and Intel, and had a copyrighted "BIOS" holding the whole thing together. Once Compaq reverse engineered this BIOS (through some legally clean techniques) the market was blown open to the clone manufacturers and Intel and MS were happy to play along since at the end of the day they were just shipping more units .... probably couldn't do it these days due to DMCA and other modern copyright legislation in other jurisdictions.
We're still waiting to hear what's acceptable in terms of "fair use" but yeah I guess reverse-engineering to create a competing clone probably wouldn't be covered :)
You're both wrong. The IBM PC was made by IBM in 1981 and it was absolutely not open. (Just hurriedly implemented using commodity parts so, other than the BIOS, it was pretty easy and legal to copy most of it) Then Compaq came along in 1982 and sold a clone of it... and in some ways it was even less open than the IBM. Neither one of those companies had any interest in the PC being 'open'.
It was the 3rd party suppliers (i.e. BIOS by companies like Phoenix, Award, AMI along with motherboard manufacturers etc.) selling picks and shovels to the would-be prospectors (i.e. clone assemblers) that allowed for the 'open' PC standard. For example, there was a company call PCs Limited that licensed AMI BIOS so that they make some IBM clones... they did kind of OK and soon renamed themselves Dell...
I think so. Compaq just proved that it could be done without being bankrupted by an IBM lawsuit. IBM was the 800lb gorilla like Microsoft was in the 90's or Apple/Google are today. Being sued into oblivion was the real fear, not that it was technically a difficult job.
Some of the other companies I mentioned were the ones that followed Compaq's lead and did their own clean room versions which they then sold to everyone else who came flooding into the market.
As an aside, this was actually a problem for the first few years: take multiple independent clean room implementations, bake in some silly things that the manufacturers did with them (gotta customize, right?), and combine it with the bad programming practices of the day (i.e. programs written in assembly doing jumps into undocumented portions of the BIOS because, hey, it worked on the IBM and saved a few bytes/cycles or did something useful...) It was similar to how well web standards worked not too many years ago with multiple browser implementations doing/interpreting things slightly differently and developers doing things they shouldn't because they could... and that was with a public spec designed to be copied. Eventually things get worked out, but both had a rough start.
Just a nitpick - Spectrum was pretty open (at least if we are talking about 48/128). My father bought us Spectrum specifically because it was more open than alternatives (Atari or Commodore), and he later bought the PC for the same reason (and I would never buy a Mac for the same reason).
Unlike its competitors, Spectrum had standard phone jack connectors for sound and magnetic tape recorder (so you could use any recorder). It also had a direct circuit board connection to the system bus on the back, and the schematics were available. My father built us the 8255 interface to have joystick and other peripherals connected.
Actually, that was pretty doable too. Later, my father bought D40, which was a 5.25 inch disk unit produced by Czech company. The D40 had its own 16kB ROM which got mapped instead of the standard Spectrum ROM when NMI was invoked (the D40 ROM contained code to handle the disks). So it was totally possible for an external device to remap original ROM with something else, even RAM.
Regarding the RAM remapping: There was Didaktik Gama (made by the same company, that made D40), that had 80kB RAM. It was done by switching the 32768-65535 address range between two banks.
There wasn't an OS to talk about. The 16kB ROM contained a BASIC interpreter, which was ignored by most applications you would load from the tape. If you wanted to talk to the hardware (joystick, printer), you did the I/O yourself.
Not from inside; but an external device could remap the address range (not that it was made often, except for D40/D80 which did that, replacing microdrive code with a floppy one) and the ZX128, which actually had two ROM banks.
There weren't many useful things in the ROM, if you were writing your application. Maybe the font table and tape loader. On the other hand, if you were able to ignore the ROM, you got few bytes more of RAM, because you were able to repurpose the "system variables" area.
The biggest "problem" with ROM that you were unable to replace it with RAM (until next reset, for example), thus taking precious 16kB out of 64kB address range.
Neither did home computers (Personal Computers), only the IBM PC clones did thanks to Compaq and their reverse engineering process not being invalidated in court.
I see the confusion now, by free to modify I meant you can go and replace your operating system, bootloader or hardware. Do you need more RAM, just get some and put it into your MOBO, third screen? Just get it and plug-in. Recently I replcated screen in my laptop to a matt one, keyboard one with harder keys and it all works. When I want to change screen in my phone, I can't only one certain model will work as expected, some models might fix, but they won't support the same resolution, can't upgrade camera or RAM there, so basically, it's not my hardware, I have to use what manufacturer pre-selected for me.
Well, the IBM PC followed a generation of 8-bit CP/M microcomputers that were pretty much open.... though they were mainly used by businesses rather than home users.
Lenovo... I instantly think of SuperFish. I remember years ago determining to never own a Lenovo after attempting to change the wireless chip to one of identical size/compatibility only to find that it would not boot - the BIOS had a whitelist for one chip. HP has also done this. No Lenovo and no HP for me.
It's things lIke this that destroy any enthusiasm over Microsoft doing things like bring Bash to Windows. Clearly, nothing has changed in Microsoft's business practices, and we can't let PR like "Microsoft loves Linux" fool us. Baller might as well still be CEO.
Right. Obviously there is some justification, but if you hung out at slashdot way too long, you'd know there is a bunch of paranoid schizophrenic people manufacturing bizarre Microsoft conspiracy theories every single day.
The post even describes the issue pretty explicitly as "Linux isn't loading the correct disk driver", yet it still spun as some intentional FU "block". I guess with a domain like "fossboss.com" you should expect the lowest form of the Slashdot mentality. I very much hope HN doesn't start to deal with this sort of pure flame bait.
Which is more likely? That Lenovo shipped a crappy BIOS, like plenty of OEMs have done before? Or that Microsoft is engaging in a covert conspiracy to block Linux users via forcing Lenovo to put the HD into Intel RST mode rather than ACHI?
It just doesn't make a bit of sense. If Microsoft wanted to block Linux, they would just require that SecureBoot not be disabled and require disablement of user key enrollment.
Besides, a clean copy of the Windows installation media doesn't boot normally either unless you slip the Intel RST driver into a custom built version of the install media.
This is just another conspiracy that I don't think makes any practical or logical sense.
Seriously, though-. If Microsoft blocked Linux overtly, they probably couldn't get away with it so easily; they'd end up with a PR disaster and/or an antitrust lawsuit. Plausible deniability helps them; now you can bet some people are going to say "come on, firmware screw-ups are no news, what are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist?" I mean, they have already taken advantage of ACPI in this way once.
(Tongue in cheek. It's not so totally implausible.)
>It just doesn't make a bit of sense. If Microsoft wanted to block Linux, they would just require that SecureBoot not be disabled and require disablement of user key enrollment.
Their modus operandi is to violate their antitrust agreement with the DOJ as non-obviously as possible with a nod and a wink and funnel campaign contributions to the relevant parties. If it becomes too blatant, however, the DOJ will be forced to punish them.
Let your wallet do the speaking. It's an open market and you have the choice of just buying from Lenovo's competitors - 'they' will then realise there's value in not doing this.
No they won't. Lenovo doesn't care about losing you guys as customers, they care about the companies who buy thousands of the damn things so their employees can run Excel on Windows.
I don't disagree with you, but nor do I particularly care about losing Lenovo as a supplier.
If Lenovo lose customers over this, it may be the case that they won't care, but in that case a competitor will surely swoop in to catch those customers by supplying PCs that run Linux.
In any case, the market should continue to supply machines that run Linux, as long as there is a demand for them. So if you demand a machine that runs Linux, just vote with your wallet!
You are probably right but the PR backslash could make them think twice before doing the same thing again. So it's still worth complaining and, why not, buying from somebody else and be very vocal about it. For sure, after SuperFish and this I won't consider or recommend Lenovo anymore.
C'mon, have some class. You're really going to co-opt a quote decrying war crimes and genocide to complain about not being able to install an alternative OS on your hardware?
With closed source software, such as the firmwares and MacOSes of the world, it is impossible to have 'checks and balances'. Yet without computers to run and develop open software on, it is that much harder to create alternatives to those closed systems.
I think this is very much a sliding scale. And that therefor the quote very much applies.
I'm still a bit flabbergasted: you really truly believe that disallowing installing Linux on a particular brand/model of laptop is directly comparable to the forced labor and extermination of millions of Jewish people during WW2?
Of course I do not believe it the way you portray it. It is called a 'sliding scale' for a reason, my friend. A 'slippery slope'[0], if you will. Completely different from 'directly comparable'.
At the top of the slope, it's "merely firmware, what is the problem?". At the bottom of the slope are warcrimes and genocide. It is very hard to stop sliding down a slippery slope once you've started.
So when you disallow Linux on a laptop you are very much at the top of the slope. And there is a long way to go. But my, oh my, it sure is slippery.
Because we live in a digital age. More and more so. And in this age, there is no way to have 'checks and balances' without access to the source code of the software. And without checks and balances, it is very hard to have Separation of Powers[1].
Interestingly enough, I've found that survivors of WW2 tend to understand this better than most.
There's no need for every slippery slope argument to make an allusion to the genocides committed by the Nazis.
Otherwise, "my friend", one invites analogies to Godwin's law, and rejection out of hand for using a reductio ad Hitlerum.
People make slippery slope arguments all the time, but often (and quoting your [0]), "as a form of fear mongering, in which the probable consequences of a given action are exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience. The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. In a non-fallacious sense, including use as a legal principle, a middle-ground possibility is acknowledged, and reasoning is provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome."
What was missing, in the recasting of Niemöller's poem, was the 'reasoning ... provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome'.
I reluctantly comment here, but.. The misuse of technology (see: end of encryption; end of privacy; end of freedom; slippery slopes, etc.) could (by my perspective) lead to massive problems, including political/ideological persecution. However, "directly comparable" it probably isn't, yet.
If (IF) a time comes when the only software available is proprietary, restrictive, invasive and possibly insecure, in a world where software is ubiquitous and often essential, I think that could be bad. The definition of fascism does come to mind.
I suspect a three-letter agency or two may be taking some steps, certainly not impaired by telemetry, backdoors or hording vulnerabilities - all of which I sort of prefer to try and avoid by using the OS and configuration of my choice.
Come on. Do you really wan't to demonize people from using allegories?
User languagewars is in good company. Orwell compared early dissidents in USSR to chickens in his Animal farm. Jesus compared Kindom of Heaven to mustard seed, himself to wine and bread, redemption to finding a coin and true faith to freaking oil lamp. Plato compared whole human existence to group of dudes sitting in a cave. Socrates compared himself to gadfly.
This is one of the most used literary vehicle. By the best and most famous thinkers of all times.
I believe control and misuse of computers will have everything to do with the next genocide of that scale and had a bit to do with that one. I also believe genocides like that start with an alignment of corporate interests and government interests against individual privacy interests.
Certainly bugs in Telegram and the use of the wrong social software among dissidents (or software that unknowingly leaks, or is endemic like windows) has everything to do with how they are spied upon. Many of those dissidents are from ethnic minorities that are targeted or will be targeted.
The holocaust was a terrible thing, but not talking about any road signs to the next genocides to avoid upsetting people isn't the prevention mechanism my history teachers had in mind.
It's worse with the non-Thinkpad line, but even the Thinkpads are getting worse. They've also started to add new laptops to the Thinkpad line, like the Thinkpad 11, which have nothing to do with the original line and are pure low-end Lenovo crap.
They're not as water resistant or as durable as they used to be, intact, not at all. I've been using thinkpads for 10 years. I've had a p61, x200, x201s and an x230. The x230 is when it started to break down. It's a shit laptop. Ive also worked on an T440 and upgraded it's ram for a colleague - it's extremely hard to open.
Sad to see such a loved frame be butchered like that.
I wish I could upvote this a thousand times, you're the only one here who saw it apparently, and nobody seems to care that the premise of this whole "scandal" is entirely fabricated.
It feels strange to be defending Microsoft and Lenovo like this, but Microsoft most likely had nothing to do with this specific configuration. There is no version of Windows that comes with a driver for this RAID controller, just the same as there is no Linux driver yet.
While I might be tempted to believe that locking to RAID mode is a deliberate choice by Lenovo to take options away from users, the target here is not Linux. The target is Joe User who now can't (re-)install Windows on his machine. That's the freedom they're trying to take away.
Of course it doesn't help that Lenovo's marketing/support departments are utterly incompetent in communicating this, and switch to "guilty mode" by default.
By the way, actually locking out Linux would be an easy feat: just require a Microsoft-signed secure boot loader in UEFI. That's the real horror scenario, not this RAID driver nonsense.
The ZDNet article above got an update, an offical response from Lenovo. I copied it from there:
UPDATE 9-21-16 7:25 PDT: Comment from Lenovo:
"To improve system performance, Lenovo is leading an industry trend of adopting RAID on the SSDs in certain product configurations. Lenovo does not intentionally block customers using other operating systems on its devices and is fully committed to providing Linux certifications and installation guidance on a wide range of products -https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd031426. Unsupported models will rely on Linux operating system vendors releasing new kernel and drivers to support features such as RAID on SSD."
So no Microsoft involvement, just a lack of drivers on Linux's part. Although Lenovo could offer a method for owners to switch the SSD from RAID to AHCI mode to improve compatibility.]
So sad to hear this. I am typing this comment from a Ubuntu on Lenovo (some 2014 model). Looks like Lenovo is not interested in business of us people.
Also Microsoft, of late, has been getting some positive news regarding open source contribution. Looks like there are parts of it, which continue to remind us, why we hated it so much pre 2004, when it lost the computing dominance war with Google.
Does anyone own novena or librem? I think they have became worth their prices. They're quite expensive, but you don't have to bother with crap like some day you won't be install Linux or BSD distro because someone loves your hardware too much and want to force you to being spied on.
Are you seriously equating the Novena with Librem? The former is a fully open hardware/software platform built from the ground up with openness and hackability in mind; some assembly required, configure it the way you want to. The latter is a rebranded x86 laptop with Intel's Management Engine firmly embedded and operational; it's a $600 midrange at best laptop being resold with Linux preinstalled for three times the price because it's "open".
Sure. The Novena is not for everyone; it's a hacker's dream laptop but not necessarily a power user's. Still, I strongly suggest not wasting money on a Librem and instead spend a little time researching a good Linux compatible laptop.
The last I heard, Dell still ships Ubuntu on some of their XPS models, and there are a few companies whose business model is based on officially supporting Linux on their own branded machines. System76[1] and ZaReason[2] immediately come to mind, but if you're seeking a fully open machine with no closed source drivers, look to Libiquity[3] for an older but FSF certified ThinkPad. Yes, it's a rebranded Lenovo so it may be a sour choice given the subject of this article, but it's a solid buy if you don't need today's CPU power. Ditto Minifree[4].
you all put too much value in some "product expert" guy's words. if you dealt with support before, you know 90% of the time they don't know what they're talking about. I mean, come on, some support guy reveals a SECRET AGREEMENT between Microsoft and Lenovo? Come on.
In a world where the most important computer networks and a substantial number of devices connecting to them run on free, open source software, the user's hardware needs are simple:
1. it must work with an open source bootloader and
2. there must be some open source drivers for it.
But those are actually software needs, so how is it that hardware companies are allowed to dictate the outcome of the above two points?
How are they allowed under the law to create intentional incompatibilities?
Can other companies reverse engineer in order to write free, open source software?
Does anyone ever violate an NDA and win?
The benefits of inoperability are undeniable. These issues were ripe in the 1980's and are still very relevant today.
The discussion of the IBM PC BIOS in this thread is worth reading.
I wonder what happens if you try to boot DOS (e.g. from USB) on current hardware, including these laptops.
My newest laptop isn't that new; it's an IBM x60 (the famous one with the fully free BIOS available, although I haven't switched... yet) and it does run DOS perfectly well. When I replaced the HDD with an SSD all I had to do was image the partition over to the new one and everything just worked. I've run Linux and even OS X(!) on it.
But from the experiences I've seen of people with newer hardware, including articles like this and the other one about new CPUs and Windows 10, it appears newer PCs are becoming far more closed and proprietary, and that's definitely NOT a good thing.
That would not be headline-worthy. There are many devices that don't have Linux drivers.
The real problem is that somebody went out of their way to remove the ACPI setting in the BIOS, and apparently did this only for the Microsoft store "Signature" edition. Furthermore it doesn't seem to be a technical neccessity, since after re-flashing the BIOS the laptop works in ACPI mode with Linux and Windows.
Whether or not this was due to malice is besides the point for me personally. They should just say "oops, my bad" and set the flag allowing ACPI in the next BIOS revision.
I have a Lenovo Yoga 900 Signature Edition I just picked up from the Microsoft Store a month or so ago. Works great with Ubuntu, I guess I got an older model that didn't have the issue.
And the first distro to release an update that supports this hardware configuration wins.. and imho, that would be awesome... the behavior itself by Lenovo is deplorable, and I will probably not be buying from them ever again... Haven't purchased a Sony labelled product in well over a decade now.. Lenovo is on that list too after the spyware issue a couple years ago.
I won't buy those 'designed for Windows' machine, even when it's 'compatible' to Linux out of the box.
Why bother to pay for the M$ license fee while you're going to rub out the disk and install Linux at the first place? (just bought a laptop from System76 recently)
I have mixed feelings about this. If the company owned the ecosystem - e.g. a Microsoft Surface or an Apple MacBook, would we expect them to support a different operating system? Albeit, MacBooks do support Windows.
I think it's fair that a vendor support the operating system(s) they advertise. If Lenovo doesn't claim to support Linux (or any other OS), it's OK for them to do whatever they want to prevent users from installing a different operating system. I'd even go so far as saying that a different OS should void the warranty. There are programs out their that will brick the BIOS if ran incorrectly.
I know this is controversial, but it's a functional business model of a large company that needs to provide support. With that said, nobody should ever buy Lenovo after their SuperFish ordeal. They should've been sued out of business: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...
I guess there is some logic, in that refurbished Lenovo laptops are still one of the more popular vehicles for Linux. I just installed Fedora on a refurb T410, slapped in an SSD, and for my (rather light) workload I notice no disadvantage compared with desktop Win10.
Don't buy a Lenovo laptop. You won't have control over it. They were installing ton of adware and a rootkit which is enabled even after formatting disk, and now this.
My current laptop is dying, stuff like this (lenovo in particular often comes to mind) is why I keep fixing it. Shopping for a new computer is just so incredibly unpleasant.
I've been boycotting Lenovo for years. Their build quality is low quality compared to other vendors (Asus, Dell, MSI) and then there's stuff like this.
In a spurt of dissatisfaction with Apple, I tried a few years ago to buy a PC, and bought a Lenovo precisely because I'd heard such good things about their build quality. My monitor had a prominent dead pixel and my spacebar didn't work, so my impression wasn't positive, but I thought that it was just bad luck.
Has the community perception of Lenovo's build quality changed, or did I just get the wrong idea in the first place?
You got the wrong idea in the first place, I think. For the first few years after the IBM split, Thinkpads were of pretty good quality. Now they're pretty poor, and Lenovo's other offerings are generally crap.
This kind of thing is seen as a positive in the infosec space, is it not? Meaning that an end user can't come along and boot linux (or anything else) via USB and bypass system security controls.
I'm personally not a fan and won't buy anything locked up in such a way, but I'm pretty sure that the security team is. Regardless, we see this all the time in other devices - tablets, phones, routers, gaming consoles, etc. It's only logical that MS would want to pursue lock-in in their subsidized environments as well.
If your disk is encrypted, no one's getting in there. The most they could do is wipe your machine clean and use it as their own, and I think that's still possible with this model of laptop.
This might be the case for this particular issue. But in the long term saying no to a deal is not a sufficient defense against freedoms being taken away.
I like these catchy titles. How long is this going to last? We have hackers who can crack iPhone pin codes designed to be secure and make hacking impossible. I guess we see a new BIOS that can enable Linux installations within a month.
I think that's not really the point here. If the story turns out to be true, then Microsoft is abusing its market power to lock down devices from vendors like Lenovo and friends.
Since Microsoft got into trouble with the EU before, they should know that this could potentially cause another investigation. Hands down, a big company is actively trying to make devices unusable with anything but their software. This is not in the interest of consumers, therefore probably illegal in some regions.
Someone already managed to break it. If I understood it correctly by somehow overwriting the ROM. That's not the point, though, as others have already said.
I hope this is not true, that Microsoft is still in war with open source, under a different cover this time, embrace-then-eliminate. but again, this has been its gene for decades, so really no surprise to me.
This is shocking. I was looking for an ultrabook and the Lenovo Yoga series 700 or 900 series appealed to me. Learning this I don't know what to do now.
As much as I'd love to (hate to) see vintage 1990's Microsoft back in evil empire mode, this doesn't make sense.
What is their motive here? The Windows vs. Linux battle is long settled, and Windows is not under thread from Linux. Why would they intentionally block Linux on one vendors laptops, gaining basically no profit/market share, and risking lawsuits and online outrage?
Hanlon's razor applies; I assume this is a case of incompetence.
As far as I can tell there is still a reasonable chance that Linux and Linux-typical software like LibreOffice will gain more market share at the cost of Microsoft products. Especially with preinstalled and -configured notebooks working with Linux.
As per my opinion on this, I'd rather see people not have knee-jerk reactions to Lenovo screwing up Linux support and people rushing for "alternatives", but rather make a concerted effort to support companies focused on Linux-supported hardware (for the long-term).
Also, this story combined with the HP printer story really makes you wonder why hardware manufacturers are going backwards towards locked-systems when their software divisions "embrace the world of open source". Hardware really is the final frontier for open-source.
Have system76 laptops improved at all over the last few years? The last couple of laptop upgrade cycles I looked at them and the general consensus was that they were a overpriced for the hardware, and had really shoddy build quality and bad customer service.
Thanks for the link, these seem pretty cool. I guess the reason people here recommend the Dell XPS is because it has features that appeal and are valuable to a certain demographic.
My first laptop was a Dell Latitude E6320. Inconspicuous. Magnesium and brushed aluminum. You wouldn't know until you touched it. SIM card slot where the battery fits, so 3G connectivity. Good plastics (firm and not wobbly, short travel distance up and down, gives it a "critically damped oscillation" feel). And, 180° opening. The keyboard and screen can be on the same plane. You can do many things with that and it's only when you try to work with a non 180° that you notice how great that feature is.
Example: Open it at slightly less than 180° on my lap, rotate it 90° counterclockwise, then rotate the PDF 90° clockwise. Now I have a sort of book with an 'A4'ish page on my left (the screen) and write on the notepad that's sitting on the keyboard. If I invert the colors on the PDF (page in black, text in white), it can be really nice.
I've heard some good and bad reviews about system76 and zareason. I'm currently considering the Librem 13 on https://puri.sm/ for when they come out in october.
Why doesn't puri.sm even include an Ethernet port in their premium product Librem 15 and in Librem 11 (though they do in Librem 13); cf. https://puri.sm/store/. There are very good reasons to use ethernet and strongly avoid use of WiFi if you are serious about privacy. For example consider slides 69-76 of http://de.slideshare.net/grugq/opsec-for-hackers, where the FBI could see when there was data sent/received by simply looking at when there was activity in the suspect's private WLAN (something that is not possible in this form for ethernet) and decorrelate it to his TOR activity.
Thanks for the link. Seeing such companies makes me confident that there will be always alternatives whatever the limitations put by so-said-brand manufacturers are.
It shouldn't make you confident. In the economy of scales involved, it takes very little for system76 to disappear and dell to stop selling linux laptops.
There are a bunch of Linux laptops for sale these days, they're called "Chromebooks".
You can install crouton to get a regular Linux environment.
There are limitations, of course. Especially if you want a lot of processing power. The primary places I use my Chromebook are where I have Internet connectivity, so I decided not to carry around all the computer power I need on a regular basis.
Well. Typical Chinese. If they can make a buck by screwing a customer over, they will make the buck.
You know Keizen? From Japan? The continuous improvement of products..
Chinese have something similar. Geizen. ("to be stingy").
Geizen, the continuous deterioration of product quality to increase profits. Same a millimeter in the thickness of the case. Use cheaper steal, make the cables shorter. The thing needs 6 screws? It will hold fine with 5. Will even hold with only 4. Maybe 3?
And if Microsoft gives a buck to lock the consumer in, why bother telling him? All part of Geizen.
"Windows 10 can't be installed on a recent Raspberry Pi."
I am sure it can -- and one wonders why Microsoft bothered to port it -- but why go through the hassle?
The point is that users can buy small form factor computers and these computers do not run Windows.
They are called development boards.
Perhaps these boards are the future of "general purpose computing".
And perhaps they can be paired these with sexy enclosures that are made by company run by designers that does not sell electronics - they only sell enclosures.
Microsoft has _repeatedly_ lost anti-trust lawsuits in the past 16 years for this exact sort of behavior. How is it that they have not learned their lesson?
Windows 10 is failing, and now they've taken actions which will surely incur billions of dollars in fines. I would not be at all surprised if the ruling judge in the inevitable lawsuit punishes them harshly for not learning their lesson the first several times.
Whatever executives are responsible for this should be drawn and quartered by the investors.
And hardly anyone is talking about Lenovo's liability. They are just as guilty as Microsoft and they're a much smaller company, will this destroy them?
> Microsoft has _repeatedly_ lost anti-trust lawsuits in the past 16 years for this exact sort of behavior. How is it that they have not learned their lesson?
> So today we have marketing departments who say things like "we don't need computers, we need... appliances. Make me a computer that doesn't run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn't run programs that I haven't authorized that might undermine our profits". And on the surface, this seems like a reasonable idea -- just a program that does one specialized task -- after all, we can put an electric motor in a blender, and we can install a motor in a dishwasher, and we don't worry if it's still possible to run a dishwashing program in a blender. But that's not what we do when we turn a computer into an appliance. We're not making a computer that runs only the "appliance" app; we're making a computer that can run every program, but which uses some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own software, and from terminating processes that she doesn't want. In other words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg
Transcript: https://github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow/blob/master/transcrip...