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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Still, just as evil and despicable.

The problem with this conspiracy is that you can't install Windows 10 on the machine either ...

From retail/downloaded Win10. Buy you CAN from Lenovo images, which are provided to you by Lenovo.

Except windows 10s drivers are compatible with windows 8 and 7, since the driver model haven't changed since then.

So using that install media you can extract the drivers and install older windows versions anyway.

So it's a pretty crappy conspiracy :)

To clarify, the extracted drivers will load for 7/8/8.1 without editing an inf file?

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.

You will have lots of manual digging to find the right drivers and will likely need to edit inf files.

The API/ABI for drivers didn't change between 7,8,10

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).

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.

Or the bug is that it fails to properly store the initial change?

Is it meant as contra Linux though? Or just pro RAID?

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.

If it was meant contra Linux, it obviously failed as the Linux installer booted just fine.

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.

>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?

Those leaked provisioning certs can be blacklisted on new hardware

> - but as the other HN thread (that I can't seem to find anymore ><) pointed out,

Flagged as a dupe. It's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545966

One guy has done a nice work decompiling the BIOS and found that skipping over the hidden BIOS pages is hard-coded into the firmware. See this https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Linux-Discussion/Installing-Ubu...

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?

Regardless, this smells evil to me...

Also making it impossible to install Windows 10 downloaded directly from MS.

Someone got through the Lenovo lock with direct BIOS flashing: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/53ri0m/warning_micro...

I think it was confirmed that the computer is locked to windows due to ms/lenovo contract

http://imgur.com/a/niewu

Yes, because a low level customer support agent is going to be privy to a secret agreement.

In reality the agent probably misunderstood what's bring asked.

Low level customer support agent is probably working off a script.

They probably looked for word linux in a script, and typed in the answer.

In reality the script read, "can I buy this with linux installed?", the answer would be only "windows 10 signature edition".

They probably don't even know what linux is.

Yes, and someone, not a low-level tech, wrote that script and wrote the reply:

> This system has a Signature Edition of Windows 10 Home installed. It is locked per our agreement with Microsoft.

They're probably only allowed to install windows at factory. Doesn't mean they've blocked it.

Are you saying the story is wrong and they haven't "locked [the SSD] in a proprietary RAID mode that Linux doesn't understand"?

Theres a difference between explicitly locking out linux, and using a piece of hardware that doesn't have linux driver.

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.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/53ri0m/warning_micro...

Yes, but it's a setting that causes the hardware to behave differently, and which would need driver support to function.

The problem is that it's locked.

As a default it would be fine, if it could be changed without removing the BIOS chip.

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.

Right, but it also breaks official microsoft windows media. How much sense does that make?

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.

I would refrain from calling that a confirmation. It's a statement expressed by customer support, without any context.

> some if the more consumer-oriented parts of the Linux ecosystem

I'm scratching my head here. Help me out. I've seen extremely limited consumer take-up of desktop Linux.

Well, it is somewhere around 1.5% to 2% and seems to currently be growing. That's not a whole lot, but still worth targeting.

>locking existing users out of Linux

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?

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.

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.

Seriously, you have a very limited word view. Learn more about what Personal Computer means, have a look at Wikipedia.

"Universal" machine.

I expect any computer I own to run anything I put on it.

Locking out software is like a car maker trying to control what brand of gas you put in your car.

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.)

I guess Lenovo should make it clear if the computer is locked or not and maybe offer an upgrade option to get it unlocked.

Yes, of course. Why wouldn't I include them?

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.

Worse, it's like trying to control where you can drive it.

As an aside for anyone interested, the Windows Hardware Compatibility Program requirements are at: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/windows/hardware/dn922588...

A offline (PDF) version is available at the bottom-most link on the page.

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.

> The laptop supports a Linux-compatible option

Where? I'm looking at http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/yoga/900-series/yoga-90... and the specs page lists only Windows 10 Home and Pro in the operating systems section.

> and effort was expended specifically to disable that option

Lenovo has issued a formal statement denying it. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/lenovo-denies-deliberate...

> Where?

I was imprecise. The chipset supports a Linux-compatible option, were it not explicitly disabled in the firmware.

> Lenovo has issued a formal statement denying it.

They deny purposefully disabling Linux, and I don't have any evidence against that denial. They don't deny disabling AHCI, because they clearly did. In the disassembly of the code: https://lnv.i.lithium.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/76843...

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".

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.

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