4 ms·

There was more to it than missing support in Linux. These SSDs have two modes of operation: AHCI (supported by any OS) and proprietary (requiring special drive

by qb45 10y ago

There was more to it than missing support in Linux. These SSDs have two modes of operation: AHCI (supported by any OS) and proprietary (requiring special drivers). Lenovo chose to hide the corresponding menu in UEFI setup and hacked the firmware to revert changes made through UEFI variables so that the SSD was permanently stuck in proprietary RAID mode, at that time supported only by Lenovo's modified Windows 10. Ultimately Lenovo said they did it because RAID mode performs better, but they only published this explanation after the outbreak of Internet drama.

lorenzhs 10y ago
I didn't argue that Lenovo did everything right - but there was no conspiracy. No secret deal with Microsoft. There were lazy decisions on Lenovo's side and missing driver support in Linux. But regardless of what the actual technical reasons where, when you look at that thread now, wouldn't you agree that many of the comments were sub-par and didn't meet the quality guidelines of HN?
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I'm around a quarter through that thread which I missed previously cuz this dude bought an Ubuntu Dell that lasted 8 years. So, the situation seems to be they intentionally changed BIOS setting to not allow alternatives to their proprietary image or something like that. A lock-in technique in an industry that's had one after another exposed going back over a decade. So, what is going on the thread posits. Let me go through the top-ranked comments. vanderZwan quotes a reference about companies that take away users' freedoms using proprietary extensions or changes that cripple or lock you into the product somehow. Biggest PC manufacturers do that when they can. Lenovo appears to. It fits. That subthread includes at least two good ones with the rest "blah." Next is paulintrognon sayings they locked the thread. DanBC countered that. Quality of this subthread & that original got upvoted is best evidence of your position so far. Then SamBam references a history of shady inclusions while some others show alternative products for Linux. Remember some upvote a shoddy, top-level comment if it contains useful information. Getting to your original point is deviate_X saying it doesn't have Linux drivers. dagaci points out Microsoft wouldn't block other MS products. Sounds good but subpoints win me over from a3n, the throwaway, and nowprovision. This is already probably the answer based on prior experience that showed up by 2nd top-level comment with some shoddy one-liners and such that are easy to skim since they likely greyed out quickly & rapid-fire, small responses are often flamewars. You might be thinking, "Hold on! You agreed with what?!" Microsoft's riches started with monopolistic partnerships with OEM's that preloaded what they wanted on the system with ways to knockout competition. This evolved into big manufacturers preloading garbage for competitive advantage plus controlling images. Sold it as convenience and recovery. I got bit by that with HP when I got my first computer that had a recovery CD but not a Windows install and license (wth!?). With Vista, Microsoft convinced manufacturers to help it trick the public about the value of a huge, bloated OS with hardware upgrades that generated revenues for the manufacturer. That one backlashed with resulting Windows 7 being awesome. Then, they tried to push Windows 8 on people with a discount then try forced moves to Windows 10. The commenters indicate this Lenovo scheme forces a move to recent Windows as a side effect of its operation. That's exactly what Microsoft, who controls Windows licensing at OEM level, wants along with their prior preference they executed in many ways with corrupt OEM's cooperating. So, that's my theory after just two high-level comments and skimming past some garbage ones in the sub-threads of the second one. Got to what I needed to know in minutes. Overall thread might be full of garbage comments with the eye rolling implications of that. However, if BIOS was changed & for an OEM image of latest Windows, then the voting scheme worked since I got to the likely scenario in just a minute or two. That's if those premises were true. If they're not, then the thread would be an example of something else entirely.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    I'm not arguing about the voting scheme, and it's impossible to reconstruct what that thread looked like while it was active. It's also not about Microsoft's shady business deals, as the whole thing was about crazy (and dumb) firmware things that Lenovo did. The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post. I believe (and the patches posted by Intel seem to confirm) that the whole thing is a mix of incompetence and missing drivers. The usual test procedure for laptops is "Does it boot the latest Windows? Then ship it!". They probably never even tested whether it can boot Linux. Lenovo has nothing to gain from ruining their reputation with something like this. They do have lots of money to gain by not testing and fixing their stuff to work with Linux, because that would require effort and time of skilled people and the whole thing would be rather expensive. With the margins in the PC business, I can't blame them for deciding against it, although of course I wish they wouldn't. Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. After a day or so the comment ranking seems to have brought the more considerate comments to the top, it wasn't that way when the thread was a few hours old. Its early hours were quite disgraceful, and I stand by my position that it was one of, if not the worst thread on here in the nearly three years I've been reading this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546096 - this one is particularly absurd, comparing Lenovo's behaviour to the Holocaust. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546306
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. " Most of those suck but two are OK since they indicate a history of sneaky behavior. This could help readers wondering if this is merely a hiccup or part of a recurring problem that justifies switching vendors. This particular company puts quite a bit of effort into things that negatively impact some of its users to boost profits. Some companies do less of that. For those users, at least two of these comments like a few I found before would justify switching away from Lenovo regardless of what their motivations were. "The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post." What I saw was a claim that the problem effectively blocked an install of anything but the OEM version of Windows. Microsoft negotiated secret deals to do that in the past. They also publicly pulled it with Vista and a recent one. So, that's how you partly test the Microsoft hypothesis. Was the only working image available only the latest version of Windows that Microsoft was pushing? Did it lock you in?
- lisivka 10y ago
  If deal is secret, how you know?
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Because you can now boot Linux on these machines. If there had been a deal, it would have failed its purpose. Occam's Razor leads me to conclude that almost certainly, there was no conspiracy. Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a secret deal.
    - qb45 10y ago
      > Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a secret deal. Nobody said it was secret, besides you. I think it was parent's point that you are strawmanning here. This was also the sole reason I responded to your initial post. You misrepresent people's position and then complain that what you presented is "abysmal" and "disappointing".
      - lorenzhs 10y ago
        That wasn't my impression reading the original submission or the comment thread. Lots of things that would adequately be explained by lack of Linux drivers and stupidity on Lenovo's side were attributed to malice and purported as fact. Also, the source of the entire story seems to have a background of baseless accusations about vendors maliciously preventing Linux: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833
        lisivka 10y ago
        But we also know that MicroSoft bribe officials for looong time. See link[1] for example. MS can just bribe someone in Lenovo directly. Or, maybe, someone in Lenovo is a huge fan of MS, so he can act against Linux just in case (I saw this in my own company). [1]: http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials/ http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials...

by qb45 10y ago

lorenzhs 10y ago

I didn't argue that Lenovo did everything right - but there was no conspiracy. No secret deal with Microsoft. There were lazy decisions on Lenovo's side and missing driver support in Linux. But regardless of what the actual technical reasons where, when you look at that thread now, wouldn't you agree that many of the comments were sub-par and didn't meet the quality guidelines of HN?

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I'm around a quarter through that thread which I missed previously cuz this dude bought an Ubuntu Dell that lasted 8 years. So, the situation seems to be they intentionally changed BIOS setting to not allow alternatives to their proprietary image or something like that. A lock-in technique in an industry that's had one after another exposed going back over a decade. So, what is going on the thread posits. Let me go through the top-ranked comments. vanderZwan quotes a reference about companies that take away users' freedoms using proprietary extensions or changes that cripple or lock you into the product somehow. Biggest PC manufacturers do that when they can. Lenovo appears to. It fits. That subthread includes at least two good ones with the rest "blah." Next is paulintrognon sayings they locked the thread. DanBC countered that. Quality of this subthread & that original got upvoted is best evidence of your position so far. Then SamBam references a history of shady inclusions while some others show alternative products for Linux. Remember some upvote a shoddy, top-level comment if it contains useful information. Getting to your original point is deviate_X saying it doesn't have Linux drivers. dagaci points out Microsoft wouldn't block other MS products. Sounds good but subpoints win me over from a3n, the throwaway, and nowprovision. This is already probably the answer based on prior experience that showed up by 2nd top-level comment with some shoddy one-liners and such that are easy to skim since they likely greyed out quickly & rapid-fire, small responses are often flamewars. You might be thinking, "Hold on! You agreed with what?!" Microsoft's riches started with monopolistic partnerships with OEM's that preloaded what they wanted on the system with ways to knockout competition. This evolved into big manufacturers preloading garbage for competitive advantage plus controlling images. Sold it as convenience and recovery. I got bit by that with HP when I got my first computer that had a recovery CD but not a Windows install and license (wth!?). With Vista, Microsoft convinced manufacturers to help it trick the public about the value of a huge, bloated OS with hardware upgrades that generated revenues for the manufacturer. That one backlashed with resulting Windows 7 being awesome. Then, they tried to push Windows 8 on people with a discount then try forced moves to Windows 10. The commenters indicate this Lenovo scheme forces a move to recent Windows as a side effect of its operation. That's exactly what Microsoft, who controls Windows licensing at OEM level, wants along with their prior preference they executed in many ways with corrupt OEM's cooperating. So, that's my theory after just two high-level comments and skimming past some garbage ones in the sub-threads of the second one. Got to what I needed to know in minutes. Overall thread might be full of garbage comments with the eye rolling implications of that. However, if BIOS was changed & for an OEM image of latest Windows, then the voting scheme worked since I got to the likely scenario in just a minute or two. That's if those premises were true. If they're not, then the thread would be an example of something else entirely.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  I'm not arguing about the voting scheme, and it's impossible to reconstruct what that thread looked like while it was active. It's also not about Microsoft's shady business deals, as the whole thing was about crazy (and dumb) firmware things that Lenovo did. The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post. I believe (and the patches posted by Intel seem to confirm) that the whole thing is a mix of incompetence and missing drivers. The usual test procedure for laptops is "Does it boot the latest Windows? Then ship it!". They probably never even tested whether it can boot Linux. Lenovo has nothing to gain from ruining their reputation with something like this. They do have lots of money to gain by not testing and fixing their stuff to work with Linux, because that would require effort and time of skilled people and the whole thing would be rather expensive. With the margins in the PC business, I can't blame them for deciding against it, although of course I wish they wouldn't. Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. After a day or so the comment ranking seems to have brought the more considerate comments to the top, it wasn't that way when the thread was a few hours old. Its early hours were quite disgraceful, and I stand by my position that it was one of, if not the worst thread on here in the nearly three years I've been reading this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546067 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546096 - this one is particularly absurd, comparing Lenovo's behaviour to the Holocaust. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546306 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12546306
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    "Let me list some of the less than stellar top-level comments from that thread. " Most of those suck but two are OK since they indicate a history of sneaky behavior. This could help readers wondering if this is merely a hiccup or part of a recurring problem that justifies switching vendors. This particular company puts quite a bit of effort into things that negatively impact some of its users to boost profits. Some companies do less of that. For those users, at least two of these comments like a few I found before would justify switching away from Lenovo regardless of what their motivations were. "The claim was that the whole thing was due to a secret deal with Microsoft, and the only evidence (apart from historical crap that MS pulled) was a community support guy's post." What I saw was a claim that the problem effectively blocked an install of anything but the OEM version of Windows. Microsoft negotiated secret deals to do that in the past. They also publicly pulled it with Vista and a recent one. So, that's how you partly test the Microsoft hypothesis. Was the only working image available only the latest version of Windows that Microsoft was pushing? Did it lock you in?
lisivka 10y ago
If deal is secret, how you know?
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  Because you can now boot Linux on these machines. If there had been a deal, it would have failed its purpose. Occam's Razor leads me to conclude that almost certainly, there was no conspiracy. Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a secret deal.
  - qb45 10y ago
    > Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a secret deal. Nobody said it was secret, besides you. I think it was parent's point that you are strawmanning here. This was also the sole reason I responded to your initial post. You misrepresent people's position and then complain that what you presented is "abysmal" and "disappointing".
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      That wasn't my impression reading the original submission or the comment thread. Lots of things that would adequately be explained by lack of Linux drivers and stupidity on Lenovo's side were attributed to malice and purported as fact. Also, the source of the entire story seems to have a background of baseless accusations about vendors maliciously preventing Linux: https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833 https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833
      - lisivka 10y ago
        But we also know that MicroSoft bribe officials for looong time. See link[1] for example. MS can just bribe someone in Lenovo directly. Or, maybe, someone in Lenovo is a huge fan of MS, so he can act against Linux just in case (I saw this in my own company). [1]: http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials/ http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials...