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.
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.