Chinese computer supplier Lenovo has denied a report that it is planning to stop offering Linux on its range of PCs and laptops. On Friday, CRN reported that Frank Kardonski, Lenovo’s worldwide product manager for its 3000 series, had indicated that Linux support was being dropped. But Lenovo made strenuous efforts on Monday to set the record straight, emphasizing that Kardonski provided incorrect information to CRN and that the company plans to continue to offer Linux on ThinkPads.
I wonder how many complaints they received about removing support on linux…
Since they never supported Linux to begin with, it doesn’t count as “ditching”…
Since they never supported Linux to begin with, it doesn’t count as “ditching”…
I doubt it would be so, at least by this comment at the end of the article.
[copied from article]
“Linux vendor Red Hat, a key IBM ally, was thrown into some confusion by CRN’s report.
“Everybody here is using Lenovo or IBM ThinkPads,” a senior Red Hat executive told ZDNet UK. “I don’t think what Lenovo (is reported to be doing) would impact our business. Anyway, if it’s true, it won’t impact us for much longer.”
It seems to me more like Lenovo had some deal with IBM, which extended to RH.
I saw articles about Lenovo “ditching” Linux on several mainstream news websites.
Somehow I doubt that the correction will be as widely publicized.
thats the tabloid press for you…
What I find interesting about this PR blunder is that it shows that Lenovo really would lose significant business if they pulled Linux support. Even if it wouldn’t impact the core business laptop market, it would cause Linux-based businesses around the world to stop buying Lenovo and destroy cooperation with the kernel developers. Companies like Red Hat, Novell, and (ironically) IBM would phase out Lenovo products.
There are enough vocal parties demanding Linux support that it’s becoming really bad PR to do anything but expand Linux support, and even then the bloggers say it’s not enough.
As for their current Linux support, it says that you have to acquire a license for your Linux distribution before they will preload it. This probably means that only RHEL and maybe SLES are supported, and you can’t get them preload something like Fedora or Ubuntu. I wonder if they allow a “no OS” option. I don’t see one on their basic direct-market website.
I’m glad to see that it was not only just a humongous PR-screwup, but that Lenovo’s actually going to start selling ThinkPads with Linux preinstalled next quarter! Actually, I’m mostly just glad to see that they’re not going to be Microsoft-exclusive.
I’ll also have to say that they’re back on my vendor-list again. Good thing too, since I really like their products, expensive as they are.
… their actions should speak louder than words. To say we support but not truely support is worse that to have somesone make a PR blunder only for people to know fully well thats not what is happening.
As I said a few posts above, whenever some company decides to expand Linux support, some faction of the free software community is perhaps less satisfied than they were before. I’m as much a part of the “revolution” as anybody, but I just can’t understand why some people think that no progress is somehow better than partial progress.
The only established companies that dive head-first into open source are the ones that have no better options. Everybody else moves as the slice of the pie gets larger. There are companies that have basically bet their business on open source, and I believe that’s a business model that will pay off. Already some of these companies are in the black, but for every one of those, there’s probably 10 others that are still operating at a loss. For most businesses there’s no real advantage to “getting in on the ground floor,” and they’ll wait until more open source businesses are profitable before seriously investing in open source.
I’m not sure I’d want to run whatever Linux flavor Lenovo would choose to support anyway, and there’s no way any sane mass-market PC vendor would support more than 1 or maybe 2 distros. That’s probably fine for most users, but for me (and most of the super-fanatics), I’d rather buy a machine with a blank hard disk anyway, and this is why I don’t understand why the idealists are so wound up about hardware vendors supporting Linux distributions. Actually, I would suppose you guys would prefer to pay your support contact or license fee to your favorite distributor than through a hardware vendor like Lenovo.
are the newer lenovo thinkpads as good as the ibm designed ones were?
All I know is that the Lenovo Thinkpads got a Windows Key
:/ Glad to have bought a R52 then. Even if it’s made by lenovo, it seems to be one of the last models that has no useless key
The windows key on mine launches skippy-xd
http://gnnix.org/resource/screen03.jpg
What a bunch of idiots.
First it’s:
“We will not have models available for Linux, and we do not have custom order, either,” said Frank Kardonski, Lenovo’s worldwide product manager. “What you see is what you get. And at this point, it’s Windows.”
Could you possibly sound more like an arrogant ass than with that above quote?
And now, after the flaming they get on the net over the dumb statement above, they backpedal. Either way, I’m not going to buy anything from a company this stupid–statement retracted or not.
Edited 2006-06-06 08:03
China is going to require all computers LINUX compatible?
Neal Saferstein
Marketing job well done, all news servers made advertisement for Lenovo, and they will repeat it this week
—
Pixel image editor – http://www.kanzelsberger.com
Edited 2006-06-06 11:17
“And now, after the flaming they get on the net over
the dumb statement above,”
I think it has more to do with wanting/needing to sell units to the Taiweanese government than it has with being flamed on suckdot et al.
Edited 2006-06-06 11:51
As I said a few posts above, whenever some company decides to expand Linux support, some faction of the free software community is perhaps less satisfied than they were before. I’m as much a part of the “revolution” as anybody, but I just can’t understand why some people think that no progress is somehow better than partial progress.
The issue isn’t about Linux, but giving consumers choice when they purchase their machine; they’re able to choose how much ram is installed; what type of graphics card, the type of screen and mouse – so why should operating systems be any different?
Same goes for those who wish to have nothing installed; how come to the cost of a ‘bare computer’ is only fractionally less than one installed with Windows? if I take the monitor off the packages, the full cost of the monitor is removed, if I downgrade the memory, the difference is removed from the cost; but when it comes to removing Windows off the machine, there is next to no difference; what is even WORSE, there is no choice for saying ‘no’ to the symantec/mcaffee application bundles that OEM’s include – sure, some people might like them, but what about those who don’t want them? how about the end user, employed by a company with a ‘Select Licencing’ with Microsoft, which gives him or her access to all the Microsoft software? he or she effectively pays for things he or she will never actually use.