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Comment by bitlax | Hacker News Reader

What benefit am I getting here over doing a fresh install?

Buying a ThinkPad with an Ubuntu preload will probably save you 100 bucks (or whatever a Windows license costs these days)?

That's how it works with Dell anyway.

I thought Windows was generally free for OEM buys, but I haven't looked in a while.

I haven't looked into OEM pricing myself lately, but as an example:

Dell Inspiron 17 3000 1Tb w/Ubuntu: £419+tax Dell Inspiron 17 3000 1Tb+128SSD w/Windows 10 Pro: £619+tax

Isn't the SSD making up the bulk of the difference here?

A 128Gb M.2 SSD is maybe £30?

Yeah, but PC manufacturers still charge like 3x the price at least for SSDs (or any component actually) when choosing/making your builds at their websites.

Those ~£200 could get you a 1TB M.2 Samsung 970 Evo[0].

[0]: https://pricespy.co.uk/computers-accessories/computer-compon...

Windows Home, but not Pro. You get a bare-minimum media consumption platform with Win Home, no dev.

Ok, that makes sense.

Windows 10 Home is fairly usable for many development workflows.

None, but probably it sends the message "all hardware is supported" to users who can't find the information for themselves and wouldn't buy otherwise.

All hardware is not supported. There is no working Linux driver for the latest generation of fingerprint readers, for instance.

All they promise is "most of the basic functions work".

https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/solutions/ht082374

That was my first question: "do the latest fingerprint readers work?"

Because I definitely have not found a driver that supports the reader on my ThinkPad X1 Extreme.

I have an X1 Extreme, and have been really wrestling with moving over to Ubuntu. Other than the fingerprint reader have you had any other problems? Do you think Ubuntu is safe/stable/performant on this machine, or would you recommend others avoid it?

We use X1 Extreme with a mixed bag of Ubuntu/Fedora/Arch. There are problems sometimes, like the thunderbolt works after updating to the latest BIOS.

All in all people are pretty pleased with the experience.

My coworker is running Arch with Sway/Wayland and is pretty pleased :)

There are some problems with adding a second screens but I think it's related to i3/Sway and our monitors.

Should be okay now. There were several BIOS updates early on that made it possible to brick your machine by toggling seemingly innocuous settings, like discrete/hybrid graphics or thunderbolt support.

As far as the Linux experience goes, I’m not aware of any issues apart from the fingerprint reader. I have never attempted to use thunderbolt connectivity or charge anything over USB.

Wow this document is dated 2018 but references technologies that were commonly used in 2008 or earlier as the criteria for certification testing?

Haha, in the case of fingerprint drivers, this really tells how 1) useless and 2) locked-down that hardware is, given how little has been done by free/open-source software developers.

I recall about 15 years ago the Veridicom/Fujitsu MBF200/FPS200 (same device) fingerprint sensors being supported by a guy in Brazil who wrote OSS Linux device drivers for them, thanks to the open data sheets. Looks like some hardware companies didn't learn much since.

Fingerprint reader support is in progress: https://github.com/nmikhailov/Validity90 Here is a list from Arch Linux about current support: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop/Lenovo

ThinkWiki fingerprint readers page is slightly more informative http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Integrated_Fingerprint_Reader

That repo hasn't committed code in over a year. I would class that as "stalled", not in progress.

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