Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US | Hacker News Reader

Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

lenovo.com

308 pointspopey123 comments

I went to the linked page and tried to make configuration changes - the same computer with and without Windows. I couldn't find that option.

On Dell's website, they let you do this to many of their workstation computers and it appears that the cost of Windows is around $200. What's interesting is that when they are clearing out stock and they offer some basic workstation configurations at $500 or so, you can still delete Windows and get that $200 off the price.

I messed with the low-end config a a bit, and it looked like the "Windows 10 Pro 64bit English,Spanish,French" license is more like around $100. Still a nice drop though. Too bad there's no way to choose "No OS installed", but maybe Canonical kicks them a little bit of money to offer Ubuntu.

Didn't Europe (maybe someone else) forbid shipping computers without operating systems? Might be because of that.

It seems that in 2016 there was a ruling[1] that said it's not illegal to sell them _with_ an OS preinstalled (and included in the price).

> The CJEU ruled that it's legal to bundle PCs with software without indicating their prices separately, and that offering consumers no choice but to buy the PC with the software is also legal, "unless such a practice is contrary to the requirements of professional diligence and materially distorts or is likely to materially distort the economic behavior of the average consumer with regard to the product, a matter which is for the national court to determine by taking account of the specific circumstances of the case in the main proceedings."

[1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/3117584/consumers-have-no-ri...

Microsoft did that after the US government made them stop charging for a Windows license after every computer a vendor shipped... regardless of the OS installed.

IBM just included a copy of FreeDOS for every PC before it sold it's business to Lenovo.

This was over a decade ago.

Yeah, and Lenovo gets around this by shipping every machine at least with FreeDOS, which technically is an operating system.

I’m pretty sure it’s Microsoft that pressures manufacturers to not offer PCs without operating systems not “Europe”.

I don’t think they ever went as far as threatening companies for selling Linux systems but it’s well documented that they withdrew discounts from suppliers offering OS/2 with computers.

Why would canonical pay for that?

As far as I understand it the opposite is true. They pay Canonical.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/search?text=ubuntu

> Windows® 10 Pro for Workstations<br>Ubuntu<br>Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®

I searched for Ubuntu and on the page that comes up, you can see in the description the html isn't quite right, so maybe it's not live just yet?

Do you have a link to the Dell webpage? Can't find it myself; all the ones I come across are for Windows systems.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...

Not sure if this covers your question, as the OP said "the same computer with Windows and Linux available" but at least you can probably find the equivalent Linux machines here and then compare to the previously found Windows systems.

Just do a websearch for "Dell Workstation". Look at the Precision 3630. Some say "Precision 3630 Tower Workstation" and some say "Precision 3630 Tower". Scroll down and you'll see that where it lists the operating system, the systems that say "Workstation" all have a "show all options" listing.

Customize the one that is currently listed at $579. It has an i3-9100 processor and switching from Windows 10 Pro to Ubuntu will subtract $109.27. But if you then switch the processor to the Xeon E-2246G, then changing from Windows 10 Pro for Workstations to Ubuntu is a price reduction of $264.36!

As an aside, I find it hilarious (and nice) that you can save a couple dollars by specifying no keyboard or mouse. Sometimes, you'll even see the option to have them skip shipping you a power cord for $2 off or something.

The last thing I need is another landfill keyboard, and I've got dozens of spare power cables. Totally sign me up for unbundling those.

The product specifications reference or PSREF is the usual place to compare Lenovo stuff - Oddly enough, you can't filter the operating system section for the Ubuntu options (product codes 30BFS6EL00, 30BFS76F00, 30BDS4T000, and 30BDS4T100 for various combinations of an NVidia RTX 6000/8000 and dual/single socket processors):

https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkStation/ThinkStation_P...

http://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/datasheet/ThinkStati...

But they don't even include a Windows option with matching graphics cards.

This is great but I'd still just format the drives and load from an image I put onto a thumb drive. Who knows what new glassfish-esq malware they have integrated into the factory OS.

Same here. I still remember that fiasco wih Lenovo malware reinstalling itself even after a clean Windows reinstall. How does a company expect not to lose all trust with a stunt like that?

That's relying on a Windows misfeature. Ubuntu is not going to pull crap from the firmware after a clean reinstall, but Windows does just that.

The issue here is that Lenovo has a history of unethical behavior towards its customers, not that a specific unethical behavior only targeted Windows.

I'm a huge thinkpad fan, but I won't be buying another one due to privacy and security concerns, and simply not trusting Lenovo.

I think it would be more fair to say that Lenovo's IdeaPad division had this unethical behavior. ThinkPad is a separate division that never did this.

I don't have any inside knowledge, but based on how it played out, Superfish and its ilk must have been a bright idea that came from the IdeaPad division, not something dictated by corporate.

I'm also a big ThinkPad fan, and I keep buying them regardless of what happened with IdeaPad. Of course you may choose differently.

Reinstalling doesn’t necessarily help - coincidentally (or not), Lenovo has been caught in the past embedding crap into the firmware so it persists through reinstalls.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150812/11395231925/lenov...

To quote a cousin comment[1]:

That's relying on a Windows misfeature. Ubuntu is not going to pull crap from the firmware after a clean reinstall, but Windows does just that.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22191786

If I remember correctly they could only do this because of a Windows feature.

The point is if they are offering it preinstalled it means they are putting more effort and support behind making it work well on their hardware. Linux hardware support has come a long ways but there are still occasional rough patches. At this point in my life I take zero joy in trouble shooting them so official Linux support is a big deal

You don't make Linux work on the hardware at the Desktop level so much as you choose hardware with chipsets that don't flout spec or have else have (open) active support from their vendors.

In my experience, very little troubleshooting on Linux is due to Linux being problematic and more oddities and quirks with hardware whose drivers were written only with a particular Windows version in mind.

To test, just boot a "problem" distro in a VM. If you don't encounter the same issues, it's the hardware.

I think you meant Superfish, glassfish is a Java EE Server (that I wish to never have to touch again)

I was slightly confused lmao. Was wondering why on earth Lenovo was trying to push web servers

Agreed. Unfortunately, I'd probably show up as a "Windows user" in the statistics because I'd buy one for the cheap Windows license, boot into Windows once to pull the stock key code, and use that in a VM later. Even if I was going to use it as a purely Windows machine, I'd want to perform a fresh installation...

Oh not glassfish, sorry I did some migration work on that a while back. I meant superfish. :D

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2890166/lenovo-to-flus...

I have no trust for Lenovo after this incident.

️ Things happen.

It's embarrassing to have to disclose such a thing to the public, but they did. I don't recall anything nefarious and they owned up - to at least some extent.

That is more than a lot companies can say. Is that the ONLY reason why you dis Lenovo? Because if so, it makes them that much more attractive in my book of flippant remarks

> Is that the ONLY reason why you dis Lenovo?

They installed spyware. That is more than enough reason to lose trust. IIRC, they did it more than once too[1].

If that isn’t cause enough, what is? Would it take pre-installed ransomware to lose trust?

https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html?m...

> They installed spyware. That is more than enough reason to lose trust.

I agree on principle, but Lenovo is no less trustworthy than any Smart TV manufacturer, such as Samsung, Sony, or LG.

It has become a common industry practice to subsidize consumer hardware with pre-installed spyware. The only solution here is to replace the pre-installed OS with an open-source alternative.

I would still pick Lenovo ThinkPad running Fedora Workstation over any iMac or Macbook product.

Well, yes but at least I can refrain from setting the Wi-Fi password in my TV and still end up with a perfectly working TV (I do.) A computer without Internet is not very useful nowadaysm

Well, until TV manufacturers will choose to add a GSM module to TVs :)

And that shouldn't be far away:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM

> I don't recall anything nefarious...

Deliberately bundling adware that injects fake results with affiliate links into search engines [1] on their machines seems nefarious in itself. The MITM of SSL connections just seems like an unexpected added bonus on top, and it took the US Department of Homeland Security to make Lenovo own up to it [2].

[1] https://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/02/19/lenovo-caught-inst...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lenovo-cybersecurity-dhs/...

I want to emphasize how bad the TLS MITM malware was (adware is too nice a term): they installed a TLS MITM attack by adding the same CA public key to the trust store of every non-business device they sold, and proxied the internet traffic through an on-device proxy that contained the private key to that CA. Yes you read that right: every device with this malware had the public and private key used to decrypt the TLS traffic of every other device with this malware, effectively exposing every user to have all of their traffic not only decrypted, but also MITM'd again. Not only was it malicious, it was incompetent too.

I don't consider this a technical failure, it's a business failure. One of two options remains: either nobody in Lenovo reviewed this software from a privacy and security perspective, or they did review it and the business deal overruled the security team's ability to veto it. Either way, this indicates an organizational dysfunction so severe there's no way I can trust Lenovo with my personal or business security again.

> I don't recall anything nefarious

If an SSL backdoor installed by the OEM doesn't strike you as nefarious, I have beachfront property in Arizona to sell you.

Lenovo's consumer division and ThinkPad division are two very different business lines with different roots and culture. ThinkPad came from the IBM PC acquisition and never had the spyware that the consumer machines had for a while. ThinkPad customers are mostly large (and small) corporations who would never put up with that.

You may still choose not to trust Lenovo, but it's worth noting the difference between ThinkPad and the consumer line.

After they replaced the menu key with the printscreen (!) key, I'm not so sure that this distinction exists anymore. They should have never played around with the keyboard.

Oh, I agree completely! I didn't mean to imply that Lenovo has been a perfect steward of the ThinkPad brand, far from it. But I think there is still some distinction vs. IdeaPad, especially regarding the malware being discussed here.

If you're running Windows, you can use AutoHotkey to turn PrtSc back into a Menu key, while keeping access to the screenshot function when you use the Windows key as a modifier. Just copy this snippet into a .ahk script that you run at startup:

  ; Remap the PrtSc key:
  ; PrtSc -> Menu (like an old ThinkPad keyboard)
  ; Windows+PrtSc -> Screenshot of all monitors
  ; Windows+Alt+PrtSc -> Screenshot of current window
  PrintScreen:: AppsKey
  #PrintScreen:: PrintScreen
  #!PrintScreen:: Send {Alt Down}{PrintScreen}{Alt Up}

This doesn't fix all the keyboard changes, but at least it makes that one pretty easy to live with.

https://www.autohotkey.com/

I wonder if there is some market pressure from players like System76?

For anyone coming along- I managed two Lenovo ThinkStation P7 series towers and these cases (the P5 series looks almost identical) are really great. Everything in the case is screw-less / tool-less. I can't remember how the M.2 drives mounted- they may have had a screw but it was a great case.

Speeaking of System 76: is Pop_OS easier to use than Mint? Does it support things like watching Netflix and DVDs without needing to look for packages and apps to install?

For Netflix and DVDs both are the same (seamless out-of-the-box). Pop!_OS has an advantage on NVidia drivers as you can select a download which includes them and enables them by default. Mint includes a driver manager which makes installation straightforward, but it's an additional step and nouveau is enabled by default.

I recently installed pop on my new build because the graphics card I was using caused crashes on nouveau (Mint) but worked flawlessly out of the box with the NVidia drivers on pop.

I've been using a Thinkpad (P52s) with Pop_OS! for about a year now, and was flawless to install (with Nvidia drivers). Pleasantly, bluetooth, speakers, mic all have worked right out of the box. I can paid it to Airpods and the mic just works.

Its been a step up from my recordings with (L)ubuntu and If say it's been on par with macOS.

Yes, way easier to use personally. For netflix, it works out of the box.

A LOT of us buy Lenovos for the track point and its 3 buttons. System 76 doesn't offer an equivalent.

Ships with Windows or Ubuntu. RHEL 7.3 officially supported.

Well, this is a positive development. I'd really like to see official support for something in the ThinkPad line, but after jumping through some hoops during installation, I've had zero problems running Arch on my Carbon X1.

Yeah, my t480s has been pretty good with arch as well. Except the wifi is sometimes finicky, but I've experienced stuff like that on nearly any machine. My Dell xps 13 surprisingly had a couple issues, though it was a ~2016. I heard they fixed a lot in later models.

> RHEL 7.3 officially supported

aka Fedora is supported. neat.

Will they be putting Lenovo bloatware on Ubuntu too?

There are more than 200,000 google search results for "remove Lenovo bloatware", for their laptops that ship with Windows

This is a super valid point, and I'd never trust a factory Linux install any more than I'd trust a factory Windows install. Wipe and start from trusted media, 100% of the time.

The news here is that my machine is still supported if I do that. I don't have to wipe Linux and reinstall Windows and deny ever having run Linux on it before sending it back for service, if that becomes necessary.

And things like the fingerprint reader drivers might suck less.

New machines all use UEFI. There's plenty of space for malware to hide in there.

Right. The Linux machine starts above $6000, and the Windows 10 machines start below $2000. You do not get the option to select Ubuntu on the low-end machines, although it would work.

Microsoft is really scared of vendors selling low-cost Linux desktops and laptops.

That's nice and all. But I'd much rather just build PCs in-house for work.

It is just a serviceability issue. These systems often incorporate nonstandard power supplies, motherboards and such, making it difficult to repair and in many cases, impossible to upgrade piecemeal.

Since building my most recent work PC in 2012, I have:

Upgraded the memory.

Added hard drives, including a couple SSDs recently.

Upgraded the power supply.

Upgraded the GPU.

Installed all the old parts in a new case, so that I could go with liquid cooling for the CPU.

In a few years I'll likely replace the motherboard, CPU and memory, but the i7-3770 and 32GB of DDR3 is good enough for now.

If it’s for work I don’t want to do that. If my pc breaks it’s my job to fix it. If it breaks and I bought it it’s some companies job not mine. For personal PCs absolutely. Not my work pc.

For a PC to use at home, I agree 100%. If you're the kind of person that's likely to upgrade RAM or components I wouldn't recommend this for personal use.

This is geared toward enterprise use. Think, corporate IT department that needs to support dozens of these. They want a service contract and they'll probably replace the lot of them in five years. Having some weird proprietary components in there isn't a problem. After all, if they need help troubleshooting they'll have direct access to an engineer at Lenovo.

Exactly, and if they have enough volume, they can really nail down any lingering bugs or problems in the chipsets or firmware and it turns into a rock-solid system. Anything else and the manufacturer (Lenovo, Dell, HP) lose money on their support costs.

If I was responsible for buying workstations for an office, I would definitely choose a standard business configuration over building it myself. If I expected those workstations to be running Linux, I would definitely attempt to buy one that was designed to work well with Linux for the same reasons.

Note: This is also why some companies buy Dell/Lenovo/HP servers even though they cost more. Support. The components are all very well tested together, and any bug you encounter you can expect other people to have encountered and complained about as well, and hopefully should have a fix on the way (or already available through a firmware upgrade). I've also heard this is why Dell drives cost so much. They make sure to have stock around for you years later in case you need replacements, so you can replace with the exact same drive model.

I actually used to work in IT in a place that built their own systems at least for the engineers using CAD.

Generally by the time anyone would want to upgrade anything in the system it was time for a new system anyway. It did save on initial costs of each machine, and made replacing individual parts easier.

There were roughly 80-100 of these in service at anyone time, built in batches of ten refreshed normally when someone complained.

I don't think this system would have kept scaling though, it took roughly 2 hours just to build assuming no issues. RMA for failed parts took awhile, and meant that more time spent fixing it. The hours were starting to add up when I left, and I can't imagine they continued.

Wonder what crapware they managed to preload that may be even more difficult to remove on Linux than on Windows without the nuclear option.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted here. This is a very valid concern given Lenovo's history.

Probably none. In my experience (and I was a Lenovo employee until very recently) most - if not all - of the Lenovo employees understand that SuperFish / etc. were a huge mistake, and are very diligent about not doing anything that could be perceived as going down a similar path again.

Of course it's a big company and there may be somebody hidden away in some corner planning "SuperFish 2.0", but the people I interacted with with were all pretty committed to not engaging in those kinds of behaviors. Take that FWIW.

Disclosure: I was with Lenovo until recently, and I still have friends who work there, but I have no financial stake of any sort in this discussion.

The positives is that official support means linux/whatever distribution the vendor has chosen is nearly guaranteed to work on the host and pushes for component manufacturers to support Linux if they want to end up in Lenovo workstations. Both are issues which at one point made Linux a difficult option in the past, particularly with vendor built PCs.

If you've ever trusted a vendor install from any manufacturer you've made a bad decision. Lenovo is just the one that got caught doing something silly.

That’s neat. Does anyone know why they are targeting a 3D animation workload, specifically? Is there software for rendering ran on Linux machines that’s used in industry?

DaVinci Resolve may be one use case. It's profesionally used video editing up to 8K footage and has free versions that run on Linux. It is actually pretty damn resource intensive when you are "rendering" the final version of a video with all your modifications.

We were not using any linux tooling in our VR pipeline last year (no longer working there). They've had a sales line geared toward VR and high end 3D for a few years now.

Lenovo is involved in the Oculus Quest, too... it's how the headband is the same as the Play Station VR headset.

Blender has recently seen Animation studios switching to it. It's recently seen a large amount of investment from Epic and a few others and one of the recent releases (2.8) made a lot of interface improvements that brought it in line with other industry tools.

https://www.blender.org/user-stories/japanese-anime-studio-k...

https://blender.community/c/today/2gdbbc/

https://www.blender.org/press/epic-games-supports-blender-fo...

I wonder if this isn't in response to a single large customer. Maybe some film studio has ordered a large number of these and they want official support for the OS of their choice. Since Lenovo is already supporting this configuration for one particular customer, it's relatively easy for them to offer support to anyone else who wants to run the same platform.

FWIW, I was a Lenovo employee up until a couple of months ago, and while I didn't work in that division specifically, you hear rumblings. And there is definitely a sentiment among many within Lenovo that wants to push Linux harder, in order to get out from under Microsoft's thumb. It's a delicate dance though, as Lenovo (like all PC OEM's at the moment) is so dependent on MS. And I don't know if this sentiment goes as high as the CEO or not, but I do know that it goes pretty damn high up the corporate hierarchy.

I would love for them to do this. Definitely pisses me off everytime I go to buy a new pc, and have to pay for a Windows license that I immediately wipe from the machine. Any reason they got rid of the blank disk option?

I'm not sure. Those decisions were made fairly far from my group. :-(

Linux is very 'tweakable' so it is used a lot for custom software and custom pipelines.

A lot of software can be run on almost all operating systems. Including software that is used by the industry, like Houdini, Blender, Unity, CryEngine, Unreal Engine. And so on.

So yeah, Linux is used a lot in the 3D industry. But my guess is that when it comes to CAD/CAM Windows is still leading.

I think that's very much true in terms of engineering CAD/CAM. As far as I know (and I check back fairly often), none of the major CAD packages in Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor, CATIA or Creo work on Linux. The only local Linux CAD project I know of (if you exclude some of the browser-based ones) that's remotely comparable in terms of general 3D parametric design is the open-source FreeCAD, which has come a long way, but doesn't even support things like ordinate dimensions in drawings or have an official governing body for development.

I been at companies with plenty of developers running Linux on their primary machine, but have never seen that be the case for someone doing engineering 3D design. Obviously that's just my anecdotal experience, but it seems to line up well with what I know about the situation across the industry as well.

It seems like a bit of a shame- with some of the RISC-V chips coming out, and tools like KiCad, one could conceivably put together an entire hardware development toolchain from low/no-cost open-source components, but the tooling around mechanical build processes more or less requires buying seat licenses for it at the moment.

Yeah, I'm going to be stuck doing CAD on a Windows machine for a good long while. Once you get used to the power of the programs, it becomes really hard to go down to something less powerful- and going from SolidWorks or Autodesk Inventor to FreeCAD is like that- there's a noticeable drop in usability and versatility that might be okay for an amateur, but not as a professional.

Houdini for instance runs on Linux machines

The backbone of Anim/VFX is built on Linux. However, the majority of these places are running RHEL/CentOS.

Adding that text is just standard marketing for the layman to know that the system is ready for graphics workloads, be it VFX or CAD.

For your second question:

Nuke, Mari, Katana, Maya, Houdini, Substance, Clarisse, Fusion and Resolve (less used), RenderMan, Arnold, VRay, Redshift, Octane, Blender, etc. You’ve also got custom in-house tools and applications, motion capture software, render managers, project management tooling, plugins, etc.

Linux is standard these days for rendering AFAIK. For the actual graphics/modelling part, I think Linux and Windows are often both used. Maya runs on Linux for example.

Why don't they throw in a ryzen processor? Paying 1400 for a 4 core cpu in 2020 is a complete joke.

Don't quote me but I'm pretty sure Intel has contracts/discounts for most OEMs and I'm sure they've written them in a way to 'discourage' them from throwing Ryzen CPUs in the mix.

I placed an order for a high-end Lenovo computer last year in mid December and it was expected to arrive late January this year. I checked the order status and it said the computer hasn't shipped. I contacted Lenovo multiple times to see what was going on and they would always state that it'll ship soon. More days go by and the order status hasn't changed. I had to file a BBB complaint to have someone actually tell me what's the hold up. A few more weeks go by and I get a Lenovo sales rep to tell that the computer won't ship until April because they are waiting on parts. I obviously cancelled the order since waiting for 4 months for a computer to ship is pretty insane. I love Lenovo computers but the purchasing experience has a lot left to be desired. Looked at reddit and forum posts and apparently Lenovo is known to always have highly inaccurate shipping estimates. Just something to be aware of if you're thinking about ordering from the Lenovo site. /end rant

If the CPU is Intel there is a massive shortage of their chips due to slow production.

Might be why

I'm so ready for AMD 4000 parts in laptops

Mine was 1½ month "late". The new due date was given 3 days after I put in the order. What are the odds? :)

I'm not sure how Ubuntu desktop became the standard for Linux desktop.

I love Ubuntu server, but some quick issues with Ubuntu desktop- Netflix needs a hard to install plugin, mouse acceleration cannot be disabled completely, unstable operating system installs that could break with a reboot or update.

Like I said, love ubuntu server, but I can't understand why Ubuntu desktop is recommended.

> Like I said, love ubuntu server, but I can't understand why Ubuntu desktop is recommended.

Have you been using linux on the desktop for any period of time, mon ami? It shouldn't be a surprise why it is so popular. For a long time "it just worked" out of the box.

I've run debian, gentoo, arch, centos, freebsd for a minute, and linux mint -- mint being an ubuntu derivitive -- and only fedora and ubuntu played nicely out of the box. And of those two, only ubuntu made ndiswrapper and wifi drivers function adequately without handholding (though fedora 20 and newer are great).

If anything, I'm surprised ubuntu server is a thing. For the server I'd just slap on debian or centos and be done with it.

I'm not a "Linux community member" but I have never understood why having a popular distro that included non-F/OSS libraries and tools in the distro to make the transition easier for people coming from macOS and Linux was such a bad thing or a reason to fight. If, instead of Ubuntu, something like Mint were the Linux distro option for Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc then new users could do "common user things" like watch Netflix, play a DVD, etc. Those of us a little more hard core already know how to get Fedora, Debian, or Slackware running (and drivers cajoled into working) on the hardware so why not aim for a larger audience? Making Mint a popular choice will be a benefit for Debian (and Ubuntu as long as LMDE isn't the flavor or Mint being offered and supported).

It just the inevitable conflict between deontological and consequentialist ethics.

Deontological ethics: non-free software is bad, so making a distro that includes non-free software is bad

Consequentialist ethics: non-free software is bad, so reducing the amount of non-free software that someone uses by giving them a mostly-free distro that includes non-free software is good

There's never going to be agreement because they are using completely different frameworks for judging if an action is good or bad.

You don't think that going the "Consequentialist Route" and funding bounties for developing F/OSS alternatives to the non-free components[1] if viable? What's not viable, in my opinion, is the shunning by the purists of everyone who doesn't believe and act like them. Some of us might if we're allowed to get there one step at a time and if they encouraged the transition the F/OSS as a whole would benefit.

[1] Setting aside issues like NVidia drivers...

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall works just fine in Ubuntu to install drivers. Also google chrome works, although video playback is not gpu accelerated.

> What's not viable, in my opinion, is the shunning by the purists of everyone who doesn't believe and act like them.

That is hardly consequential(ist). The group doesn't exactly wield much power. What influence they have is setting the bar higher so that others can get there one step at a time as you say.

Netflix works fine on the latest Firefox and Chromium, included as default on a large number of distros.

Ever since the Widevine fiasco Netflix and Amazon have just worked out of the box on Linux.

> I'm not sure how Ubuntu desktop became the standard for Linux desktop.

It's not even the most popular distro these days. It was just hyped too much in the past, and there is still the afterglow of that.

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?module=statistics&vi...

I recently switched from Macbook Pro to X1 Carbon. I would have loved to have Ubuntu installed on it and everything working. I would happily pay USD 100 to Levono or someone else to install a clean Ubuntu image.

Majority of my work happens in browser, shell and Intellij so I would not care much about anything else. Windows is too crappy at this point IMO.

I don’t imagine there are many users that would be willing to pay more for a laptop preinstalled with a Linux distro.

The Windows license is still valuable even if all I do with it is run a couple programs in a VM. Some people might bite for a discount but it seems silly to pay more!

I'm still rocking the T520 thinkpad from 2012 with quad core i7. I thought I'd replace it in 2020, but here we are. I really don't see anything that is really any faster or has the linux compatiblity. Hoping it changes soon, I've used it as my main work machine all these years.

I use a Thinkpad carbon X1 with Debian. Fantastically portable with all day battery life. Just make sure to check the Arch wiki (regardless of which Linux you install) for a few special commands needed to make everything work properly.

The carbon never supported the docking stations right? I always liked a docking station so I can drop the laptop on it and have all my desk monitors come to life. But seems like docking stations aren't really popular anymore either... (which is one reason I never went with system76)

You can get most of that through thunderbolt hubs these days, there's little need for proprietary docking station connectors.

PSA to everyone using a recent ThinkPad: Update your thunderbolt firmware. Boot into Windows if you have to... This one is a might-break-your-hardware class bug.

https://github.com/fwupd/missing-firmware-lenovo-thinkpad/is...

Damn. Thanks for the heads up. I erased windows without ever booting it, but hopefully this can be done without it.

I've got the x1 carbon 6th generation with ubuntu on it and it's great. I don't have a docking station, I just have a usb-c monitor w/ usb and audio ports on it. I have to connect two usb-c cables when I get home (power and monitor). Supposedly you can buy usb-c monitors that also do power over the one cable but I guess I didn't get the right one.

I'll probably eventually buy https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/ to get it all in one cable.

They dock from the side. It works with Linux too except I have this annoying bug where my attached monitor turns off and back on randomly a few times per day.

I went from T410s to T440p quad-core to T495, all with Fedora. So far, I am very happy with the T495 with Ryzen 7 Pro 3700U.

The integrated Vega GPU seems better than the discrete but anemic NVIDIA GPU I had before, even though it is limited to system RAM bandwidth. The GPU driver experience is much better so far, much like with Intel integrated GPUs.

Battery life is far better, with very low idle power usage out of the box while doing everyday work on terminals, Firefox, and wifi. I've never run it down all the way yet, but it seems it would last more than an 8 hour day.

One caveat is that I have not yet attempted to do computational work with the AMD GPU or CPU, so cannot comment on drivers in that regard.

> I really don't see anything that is really any faster

Hardware has improved since 2012 along all metrics. Yes, even core count.

> or has the linux compatiblity.

Looking at the arch compatibility tables linux works completely on most models. Some don't support the fingerprint reader or minor stuff like that. Only very few have showstopper issues.

For a technology company, the site is sluggish and difficult to use. Argos would provide a better user experience. They don't allow Linux on the 'build your own' option, but at least you do get McAfee. The Linux ThinkStation P520 starts at $6,699.00. Searching from the main screen you get a ThinkStation P520 at £1,359.60 but no option to select Linux.

Searching for 'linux' off the main screen and you're lead to a selection of 3 Operating Systems, Windows, Windows, Windows. Are MS paying the to keep alien OSes off Lenovo hardware?

I'm not really proud of this, but I never really found a Linux OS (or BSD) that "just worked". Maybe I'm too picky, but just being able to resize windows dynamically should be out-of-the-box.

Ever since Windows steered away from Balmer and WSL and other things happened... I'm really comfortable in Windows. It's polished and offers all the Linux I need.

I agree with Linux, but I'm surprised to see anyone call modern Windows "polished". Late editions of Windows XP were polished. Windows 10 is a pile of untested junk. Things break all the time. Things rely on an internet connection for no good reason all the time. Baked in, impossible to disable telemetry. I put up with it, but only because none of my corporate software works on Linux.

I don’t really have that experience. I do leave everything on defaults and use all terminal tools to program (editing too) so I guess I’m not really asking much of it

Try to do some system management and you'll often realize the steaming pile of shit under the fancy looking hood. Sudden changes to SMB configuration after updates bringing issues that differ not by version after the updates but by version of when they were first installed... and all of a sudden there's a bug with NTLMv2 and what have you, etc, etc

What do you mean with resizing windows dynamically? Ever since windows 10 I found the default behaviour annoying on windows.

Window management seems so much better to me on Linux than Windows, but indeed not out-of-the-box.

It’s just comical to me how difficult it is to click on the corner of a window in most of not all desktop environments... the only diestro that has it right is Ubuntu

I'm back on Linux again after years on Windows 10. It is far far better than in the past but still full of small annoyances. For example, there are two settings for mouse sensitivity (acceleration speed and acceleration delay) but neither of these will actually disable acceleration completely and I see no good way to adjust the sensitivity itself without searching for some unknowable settings in some unknowable dot file.

Another issue that I had years ago still causing problems is the inability to move a secondary monitor to the left of my primary without every application defaulting to open on the secondary.

I also tried connecting to a blue tooth game pad (Xbox one). It would only stay connected if I changed one of those mystery settings again, and even after that the inputs didn't actually work. This is especially frustrating because I can even plug a small USB adapter into my switch and have instant compatability with the same game pad.

Exactly! What districts do you think is best? I’m becoming a default-person and Ubuntu default is usually the best for me. My current setup is windows and Debian WSL, although I do use in-terminal editors so I don’t really suffer any of the Linux-windows integration woes

I just built my own computer. It was a little annoying but kinda fun at the same time. My Ubuntu computer is better than the one pictured and cheaper. It also has cool LED lights.

I would never buy a Lenovo.

I’m going to need a labtop soon (won’t be my main computer), I’m probably going to get a used $200 dell laptop and install Ubuntu and it will run like a champ...

Althoug I believe this is a good thing for Lenovo to do I think being suspicious of Lenovo's actions is definitely warranted after all the shenanigans with Superfish - reinstalling the OS from a trusted source is definitely the way to go.

But still no fingerprint sensor driver on Ubuntu for Lenovo :(

Can anyone recommend a netbook or smaller laptop good for recent release of Ubuntu?

If you edit your text in a terminal and use a light weight browser: Asus' E203MA has been working well for me. The CPU is slow. There's not much RAM. I wouldn't run Gnome on it. XFCE, Mate, i3 have all been good.

It's underpowered, it's cheap, but wow does the battery last forever (10 hours).

Beware: Ubuntu's palm rejection is very poor out of the box. No palm rejection issues on Arch or Mint.

How about starting offering refund for the Windows tax for Linux users on any purchased hardware? Lenovo are disgusting in refusing to refund the Windows tax. One of the worst companies to deal with in this regard.

Of course, a lot better would be to have an option to buy any of their computers with Linux to begin with.

Is it the year of the Linux desktop?!?!

I know you're at least half joking, but for me it actually is the year of linux on the desktop.

As a developer who does server-side stuff, a mac was an obvious easy choice for a long time -- a tradition that has been widespread going at least as far back as dhh's intro to rails development using textmate [1].

What does that open source crowd want now? They want to build OCI/docker containers and deploy them to kubernetes clusters. You can do that on mac, but these containers need to run on a linux kernel, so the setup winds up as containers on a VM on the host OS.

If your dev machine is linux, you can remove the VM layer in between and the setup is simpler and more efficient. I think that might push a lot of developers from mac to linux. I just got a new dev machine recently and it's a linux laptop.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzj723LkRJY

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