Submitted by “Lenovo, the world’s No. 3 PC maker, said on Monday it would start selling laptop computers preloaded with Linux software from Novell instead of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.” Ars Technica has more on the announcement. “ThinkPad customers will soon have a new configuration option, as Lenovo and Novell have announced that the popular laptops will begin shipping with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED) preinstalled. Although the ThinkPad has been certified for Linux for some time, this marks the first time Lenovo will ship a laptop with Linux preinstalled – while providing both hardware and OS support.” Lenovo is the third big name to sell consumer computers with Linux installed (after Dell and Acer).
My T23 worked perfect with linux, my T40 worked perfect with linux, and I need a new T-something in the next months.
So bring it on baby!!
I love my Thinkpads, and overall this is a nice announcement. Too bad it will be limited to the T-series. I would love to buy a new X series with Linux preinstalled. Linux works pretty well on my x40 already, but the newer X series Thinkpads are nice. 🙂
would be nice if they had one that met my reqs but last time I looked they didn’t.
I want one with a core 2 duo >= santa rosa (800Mhz FSB), nvidia graphics, intel wireless n, and a decent display 1680×1050 on a 15.4″, or 1440×900 on a 14.1″, or 1280×800 on a 12.1″.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en…
Click customize on the far right model, and switch to the 1680×1050 display. Then select the N wireless option. All done.
Edited 2007-08-06 20:17 UTC
Hmm, should have said geforce instead of quadro. I always find something to complain about.
Ever since the Novell deal was revealed, I’ve been a little fearful that Microsoft has set a trap that will hurt the adoption and use of GNU/Linux in some way. I don’t know how it will work, but Microsoft has proven itself a very skillful and adept schemer.
OTOH, I’m now wondering if they’ve schemed but failed. If PC manufacturers and Novell are now emboldened to press ahead (regardless of the agreement wording), Microsoft may have helped the jeannie escape from the bottle.
well, knowing SLES, SLED and OpenSUSE, I can assure you that it’s a good thing. At least in the netherlands, the patents deal is of no value at all. Interoperability is something you cannot really argue about.
Basically, the only ones that really are legally f*, is MS itself.
MS tries to stop the open source community and tries to split the people and if you are immune to it, they fail. I am.
“from Novell instead of Microsoft”
Isn’t Novell now just an under-privileged daughter of Microsoft? I mean, considering Novell’s stupid agreement with Microsoft, buying a computer with Novell’s version of Linux on it means signing a contract with Microsoft.
So I wouldn’t really use the word “instead” here…
I agree. When Novell first signed with Microsoft, I basically said – well… Suse is definitely out of any future consideration for me.
On the plus side, we have the world’s No. 3 PC maker selling Linux. In the grand scheme of things, this is much better than being just another Windows vendor with no competing alternative OSes.
In the end, it’ll be alot easier for users (enterprise, soho, home) to transition from any version of Linux than from Windows2Linux. Have to give this move a thumbs up. It’s hard to believe that in just the last few months 3 major vendors (Dell, Acer and now Lenovo) will be selling Linux PCs/Laptops. So far… it hasn’t been a bad year for Linux.
Well, while I agree that software patents are stupid, I’m unaware of anything from the Novell/Microsoft deal that has had a negative effect on the Linux community other the bickering over whether Novell has gone to the dark side.
From a strictly technical standpoint, SuSE is a great distro. I’ve used it for a number of years now and for the most part have loved it. The whole zenworks thing with OpenSuSE 10.1 was a bad move, but they improved it with 10.2 and are finally getting rid of it with 10.3. Other than that, I’ve generally found SuSE to be a great distro choice. As long as Lenovo’s laptops have the kind of specs that I’m looking for the next time that I get a laptop, I’ll probably get one from them.
sadly, you can’t have built to order machines outside the US. So no WSXGA+ screens on T61 for us Europeans. I had a T60, it was a good machine, but noisy and Linux support for the ATI X1400 was abysmal.
I went with a Latitude D830 as replacement for the T60 in the end (still waiting for it to arrive). Dell’s pre sales support was also vastly more helpful than Lenovo’s.
I have a T60 but I chose the Intel graphics option instead for better Linux support. Maybe the noise you speak of is related to the fans cooling the gfx card because my machine is whisper quiet 99% of the time and when the fan does flip on it is barely audible.
microsoft get paid anyway
Only recently have work been done to improve the power usage of linux. For ex. fedora 7 was a lot better than 6 and the next version will probably be even better. But SLED 10 was released a while ago. Hopefully novell will backport some of the improvements when they are added to OpenSuse 10.3 and release them in a service pack.
There was a service pack just released for SLED 10 which has a lot of updates that mirror OpenSuse 10.2. Small updates are available through update channels as always.
Now it seems time to push work to officaly get me a linux laptop
none of this duel booting stuff 
I wish they would have chosen a different distro but overall, I believe this will be good for linux in general.
So simple, even a caveman can use it!
Dell’s weren’t so much targeted at enterprise laptops and computers, but more for the home usage demand, which many believe is the most difficult to tackle. These new offerings by Levano are clearly more targeted at what the enterprise interests are (which is why they chose Novell over Ubuntu). Shuttleworth mentioned recently that Dell was going to have some new offerings available soon, and I have a feeling that it is going to be enterprise machines. Acer was targeting the product to retail store demand, Dell to the individual consumers, and Levano to the enterprise desktop. I personally am glad to see they are all targeting different areas, as it should hopefully mean they all have more success for right now, and its going to show the other companies that there can be success by targeting any of these 3 areas, and I think this move will also end up pushing the others into being a little more competitve and make Dell and Acer go a little deeper into the water.
Now, lets hope that HP will follow.
If HP, Dell, and Lenovo all sells Linux boxes, this will put more pressure on hardware manufacturers to provide Linux drivers for their products.
I would also hope that Lenovo will advertise their Linux offerings side by side with their Windows products and not like Dell hide them away on a web page nobody in the back yard of their website.
And pleace, Lenovo offer Linux on your X series models as well. There are people that are running Linux on some of these, so it can’t be that hard to make the support official.
…I wonder where all the naysayers have gone – you know, the ones who kept saying that it was only natural for these companies to refuse offering their laptops with Linux preloaded, on account that it was not economically feasible?
Well, I guess it’s hard to type when you have that much crow to eat…
“First Acer, then Lenovo…”
Not to mention, Dell.
Well, it’s now clear that there is no “monopoly” anymore. So can I assume you favor lifting all oversight regulations that Microsoft has been operating under? And you also favor the EU dropping its complaints against Microsoft abusing its “monopoly”?
Edited 2007-08-07 01:06
A bit hasty, wouldn’t you agree MollyC? After all, a virtual monopoly is what we have always been talking about.
If you think about it, this benefits you too. Not only does Microsoft have something to fight for (namely the retention of it’s market share), it also has a reason to provide higher quality software, at better prices, than previously. No matter your opinion of said past software quality, this can only be a good thing for Microsoft consumers. 😉
Edit: Typos
Edited 2007-08-07 01:29 UTC
First, I’m not soley a “Microsoft customer”. I have one XP computer and one Mac.
But I don’t see how one can argue that there’s still a “monopoly” if all of these vendors are offering alternative OSes. Certainly there’s no monopoly in “desktop OSes for intel-compatible CPUs”, the market that Jackson ruled Windows to enjoy monopoly status in. Dell, Acer, and Leveno are offering non-Windows OSes on desktop computers running intel-compatible CPUs. Apple is too, for that matter.
“Virtual monopoly” (whatever that means) shouldn’t be used to force restrictions/oversight, etc. Either there’s a *real* monopoly or there isn’t.
You say Microsoft customers are benefitted by vendors offering alternative OSes as that will force Microsoft to improve its own OS. But if the government is forbidding them to improve their OS in the same ways that the competition can (e.g. Microsoft is forbidden from bundling high-end software or including particular OS services), then Microsoft customers aren’t helped at all.
Note: I’ve said before that Windows does hold a monopoly, but not in the market that Jackson invented, certainly not today. The market that Windows has a monopoly in is “OSes that run Windows apps”. But that’s not what any of the legal proceedings and the resulting oversight/regulations were about. They’re about “desktop OSes on intel-compatible CPUs”, and there is no monopoly there.
Edited 2007-08-07 02:25
MollyC, again… its all in the numbers. In this case Microsoft isn’t putting up a “barrier to entry” because their profits have yet to affected by Linux thus far.
If Linux were to began chipping into Windows profits, Microsoft would diminish their “OEM-benefit” programs until Linux offering were seized as a means of bribery.
Anyway, even if you did have a point, you still cannot just walk into a computer retail store and buy a system with “Linux” installed–at least not where I live.
But I don’t see how one can argue that there’s still a “monopoly”
I can, It’s called 90-95% market share.
Edited 2007-08-07 02:24
“I can, It’s called 90-95% market share.”
Obviously, that 90% share is not an insurmountable barrier to entry, not today it ain’t. That was archiesteel’s point (unintended, though it was).
Anyway, I’m done here. I normally don’t post in Linux threads. I was only responding to archiesteel’s celebrating, mocking, and dishing out crow and what-have-you.
Edited 2007-08-07 02:31
No, that wasn’t. Just because alternatives *are* available doesn’t mean that Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly on Desktop OSes that run on generic X86 hardware…
BTW, the only reason I posted in the first place was the great number of posts in *recent* articles here about this very subject. I guess that, as a member of the MDB, you just couldn’t this well-deserved little mockery pass, mmh?
A very good point but I think your missing something out in this particular case. It’s not so much that MS is being forced not to improve they’re OS, it’s that governments are forcing MS to stop using it’s considerable market muscle to illegally shut down competition. If MS is removing competition and choice from it’s customers, then MS is not helping it’s customers, it’s that simple.
Again, another good point but you are bandying words and using semantics to justify your current stance that MS should somehow be let off the hook. When Jackson formulated his charges, MS did have an OS monopoly for the x86 platform. Just because that is slowly being chipped away at, does not make the charge any less valid.
Another point you seem to be missing is that, before Linux arrived, nobody was in a position to provide an alternative, as everybody else had already been muscled out of the game. MS cannot kill Linux using it’s traditional methods, and this alone is a huge factor leading to the current state of affairs, i.e. large OEMs offering alternatives preinstalled.
On the other hand, Apple is a new comer to the x86 market and originally built up it’s market share using the PowerPC platform. Just because they now offer x86 based solutions does not mean that they would not have been in the firing line if they had started out with said platform.
I’m sorry, but the Law disagrees with you. You don’t need a *total* monopoly in order to be subject to anti-trust laws and such – all you need is a position that is dominating enough that you can leverage it to extend your domination to other markets, and basically prevent other from entering those markets.
MS still has a monopoly position as far as Desktop OSes are concerned, although a (somewhat) weaker one.
Your definition of monopoly is too narrow – though, being a MS apologist, that’s what we should expect from you. Nonetheless, I suggest you read up on anti-trust laws and find out what the legal definition of a monopoly is (hint: it’s not having 100% of a market).
Sorry MollyC but theres still a monopoly at present.
Until Microsoft owns less than 95% of the marketshare regarding OSes they will remain an OS monopoly. I’m not sure the status of their major Office suite but its probably not in the *possible* competitions’ favor.
A monopoly means to have exclusive control over a market with little or no competition. In this case, Macintosh OS X, Linux, and all other OSes combined add up merely 5% of the market; theres clearly no credible competition on the desktop.
Microsoft does not yet have a monopoly on the server but its coming.
Edited 2007-08-07 02:07
Xaero_Vincent, you’re saying that you will say that Windows does not have a monopoly once its share goes down to 94% or less. I’ll hold you to that.
I think it’s great that these vendors are offering Linux. The more competition, the better, as it’ll force MS, Apple, and Linux vendors to step up to the challenge. But it’ll be easier for Apple and Linux vendors to compete when the government is hamstringing Microsoft from such competition based on a “monopoly” that doesn’t really exist.
For example, let’s say that Apple and Ubuntu bundle high-end video editing software with their OSes. Let’s say they bundle high-end business apps with their OSes. Microsoft is forbidden to compete with that sort of thing. Therefore the increased competition doesn’t help Microsoft users because Microsoft is forbidden to better its own offering in a likewise manner.
Edited 2007-08-07 02:19
Because a monopoly is really defined by the public, it up to them to decide when a declassification is appropriate.
I would say a declassification may occur when less than three-quarters of the market is owned by a single entity; however, different people may have different criteria.
Edited 2007-08-07 02:29
I’m not sure if I should agree or disagree with you.
I’m not sure if I should agree or disagree with you.
You don’t need to.
Marketshare and quality/usability are two different things.
“A monopoly means to have exclusive control over a market with little or no competition. ”
No, having a monopoly means having NO competition. Having an unhealthy dominance of a market is not a monopoly.
Sorry, but that’s wrong. In the legal sense, a monopoly is “a business or inter-related group of businesses which controls so much of the production or sale of a product or kind of product to control the market, including prices and distribution.”
A monopoly can have competition (indeed, it’s virtually impossible for there to be *no* competition in a market), however a monopoly in the legal sense can use its dominant position to make it impossible for others to gain any type of significant portion of that market.
So, yes, having an unhealthy dominance of a market can certainly be a monopoly.
You are both right. You’re using the legal term and he’s using the strict definition (which is irrelevant in court).
You are correct, of course. I do believe that, in this context, the legal definition is the one we should be using, though by any means Microsoft is not a strict monopoly (otherwise I wouldn’t be typing this post on a Linux laptop…)
They really should create a new term for this type of “monopoly” so as to avoid confusion.
Actually, I’m using the legal term as I learned it way back when I took law. Of course, that was 10+ years ago and in Sweden so the term may have changed or the term may be different where you are.
Time to relax, folks. It only took a decade of screaming and begging and millions of dollars in fines and similar sanctions, but Microsoft has finally allowed a few Linux installs to ooze onto the market. So, let’s just sit back, relax, and watch them allow this trend to continue unabated.
It’s obvious that some folks have never held an angry housecat. You may have it, but you better be careful of how you let it go.
“Well, it’s now clear that there is no “monopoly” anymore.”
There never was one in the first place.
“So can I assume you favor lifting all oversight regulations that Microsoft has been operating under? And you also favor the EU dropping its complaints against Microsoft abusing its “monopoly”? ”
Just because there isn’t a monopoly does not mean there shouldn’t be regulation. Employing monopolistic tactics is still illegal, for example.
Non-windows laptops have always been available – even if you’re just talking about Mac systems.
Personally I don’t see this news as a change in Microsofts monopolistic stronghold (most people will still choose Windows over Linux and most high street stores are unlikely to stock, let alone push to new users, Linux laptops).
This news just opens up the market for more choice. What needs to be done now is to encourage people to choose Linux.
You know, there is a concept of “date of commiting a crime”.
If charges would be dropped just because a defendent didn’t repeat it at a latter time, this would be a very popular defense.
“Your Honour, I request that all charges against me are dropped, because I didn’t murder anyone this week (probably because I have been in police custody)”
But SLED 10 is aging.
Linux software ages much quicker than Windows because the development model is much quicker in practice. Virtually every component in SLED 10 is now outdated or obsolete.
It would have been nicer to see something newer but at least the systems wont be marketed towards typical consumers; it would never fly that way.
I’d disagree with that one. Like I said earlier, updates and bug fixes are constantly being released. Also, a large service pack was just released. By your logic, mac OSX is now outdated or obsolete because it was released half a decade ago.
Moreover, SLED just like RHEL is geared towards the “enterprise”. Outdated and obsolete takes on a whole different meaning when reliability counts more than having a bleeding edge kernel or the latest compiz fusion features.
What important parts are missing from enterprise geared linux distros?
Has Dell released any sales figures for their Linux machines yet?
Has Dell released any sales figures for their Linux machines yet?
Not to the public. Ubuntu has stated that the sales are “good”. And I guess they are since it’s just been announced that they are expanding to Europe now.
http://www.ubuntu.com/dell
Edited 2007-08-07 11:42
I knew right from beginning. Catching the first vendor for Linux is difficult not the second one onwards… Thanks to Ubuntu & Dell deal. I wont be surprised to see more vendors slowly and silently joining the Linux stream.
It is not a major threat to MS but definitely a very good option to the end user like me while buying new PC/Notebook who is forced to pay for Windows OS just because I didn’t had a choice when I purchased my Notebook.
This is great news. I love GNU/Linux and I am a open source advocate myself. I do see some humps in the road ahead though. Microsoft does not like this. They will probably start feeling the heat by now. They will, at some point, react to this.
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment:
Do you guys think that with the number of companies now shipping laptops with Linux preinstalled that the market could potentially get swamped (if not now, maybe in the future) thus less Linux systems will be sold be each company thus the company withdrawing Linux preinstalled systems and us all ending back at square one?
I heard very good things about Thinkpads.
I experienced very good things when using Linux. Maybe it’ll be a perfect combo.
ThinkPads are awesome pieces of equipment. My family and I have owned ThinkPads for years, and they’ve always been well made and defect free. They have great little touches in them like the ThinkLight that illuminates the keyboard.
The R51 I have is currently running Ubuntu 7.04 without any problems. It won’t run Beryl, but I really don’t need that.
A rock solid, fully supported distro with all the extras out of the box.
Probably I would replace it with openSUSE, which has even more packages (but SLED should be fully compatible with openSUSE 10.1). Of course the hardware will fully support openSUSE.
I’m surprised it took them so long to pull the trigger on this. I always wondered why ThinkPads never had the option to install Linux on them given how heavily IBM has invested in the OS. Maybe now they will port all of the nice little tools that they have on the windows side of things.
Anyway, Suse is a nice Enterprise level distro. I installed openSUSE last week, and it looked nice, much more configurable then Ubuntu. It didn’t fit what I needed it to do, so I switched to Kubuntu. (It was going to be too hard to administer for my sister.)