13 ms·

OK Lenovo, we need to talk

156 points by southerntofu 5y ago

phendrenad2 5y ago
Trying to cut through all the right to repair stuff to get to the actual ThinkPad issue... it seems that the GPU has Linux support issues because it uses PCIe in a way the Linux driver doesn't expect. But isn't that an Nvidia problem? Is Lenovo really going to work with Nvidia to make sure they have a working driver for Linux? That's asking a lot for a very small segment of thinkpad users.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  >Is Lenovo really going to work with Nvidia to make sure they have a working driver for Linux? If they say they provide Linux support, they have to. Else they're misleading potential buyers.
- syshum 5y ago
  They do have ThinkPads that are certified to work with Linux, ship with linux, and have Nivida Graphics The W541 is not one of those models... Lenovo has one of the best websites for looking up their models, and configuration. I am not aware of any other vendor that has anything like it. Pick a model, then filter by OS. The T15 as an example has plenty of models with Linux Support https://psref.lenovo.com/ https://psref.lenovo.com/
CRConrad 5y ago
> Free Software = OpenSource + ethics Yup, makes sense. Because Open Source was originally created as Free Software minus the ethics bit.
southerntofu 5y ago
Some discussion on Haiku forums: https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/ok-lenovo-we-need-to-talk-haiku-project/11414/63 https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/ok-lenovo-we-need-to-talk-hai... Beyond the GNU/Linux debate [0], there's some interesting points in there. [0] Today i learnt: Haiku should not be called GNU/Haiku because Haiku is the entire system and not just the kernel, and rms (to my surprise) approves this interpretation
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Linux is the operating system. It manages hardware and provides system calls. It's possible to write software that Linux boots directly into, no user space at all. This GNU/Linux stuff comes from POSIX's definition of operating system. That piece of paper says operating systems have all these little commands like cp, mv, etc. Therefore, GNU gets to be part of the operating system because it provides those commands. It doesn't have to be this way though, especially on Linux where one can just trash all the GNU stuff and obtain or write custom software directly on top of the kernel.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > This GNU/Linux stuff comes from POSIX's definition of operating system Technically true. But do you run a lot of software that works without glibc and other userland utilities? > on Linux where one can just trash all the GNU stuff and obtain or write custom software directly on top of the kernel True, yet most of us still use a GNU/Linux distribution.
    - zibzab 5y ago
      Just don't forget that it goes both ways. GNU today's is much more relevant than GNU 30 years ago thanks to the Linux community. Would not surprise me if 80% of recent GNU contributions come from the Linux crowd.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      > But do you run a lot of software that works without glibc and other userland utilities? Yes. I made a few of these utilities for my own use. I actually started developing a Linux system call library to facillitate this but then I discovered the kernel developers themselves already made one for their own tools. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/include/nolibc/nolibc.h https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/include/... People can include this awesome header file in a freestanding C project and enjoy making 100% dependency-free Linux binaries. No C standard library cruft anywhere. It's amazing. You could boot Linux directly into one of these things just by writing init=/my/program in the kernel command line. You'd need to do some init stuff like mounting procfs and sysfs but it's totally fine. I've even seen graphical software running this way with OpenGL ES on top of kernel interfaces for mode setting and buffer management, people could even make video games that run this way. I really want to get into this.
mikro2nd 5y ago
"ORIX Atmos... 1989... and it's still working" Heed this and weep.
bitcraft 5y ago
I never understood how some people seem to not know that Lenovo and IBM are not the same company. When Lenovo, a completely different company, bought the rights to manufacture IBM products in 2005, the Think* brand was no longer IBM. The author states, eventually, his point being that Lenovo lost it’s mojo, but it never had any. The Thinkpads people remember with mojo were the IBM ones, and some Lenovo branded ones after the handoff, but that’s really just residual “mojo” from the old teams and processes. Lenovo was never good, and really isn’t now, and has a long record of bad behavior.
- kmlx 5y ago
  i think the fact that people associate Lenovo “thinkpads” with quality products says a lot about how much “mojo” the ibm “thinkpad” brand had. and in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Also to a point Lenovo had one of the original ThinkPad labs. Don't know how much is still there tough but that's why Lenovo is not just Lenovo to me.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    Not necessarily. Just because people liked them doesn’t mean they were profitable.
  - toast0 5y ago
    > in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm. IBM got out of an industry they didn't want to be in, but they still have a lot of positive brand feelings, and a large stake in Lenovo (not sure if they still hold that). Where's the bad for IBM? They sold off their PC server line to Lenovo about a decade later, so clearly the first deal wasn't too bad. IBM seems to want to focus on Enterprise, so getting rid of things that individuals use, while still having relationships to sell them (because individuals exist in the enterprise), seems to work for them. After IBM bought SoftLayer, Lenovo servers started showing up instead of SuperMicro.
  - 5y ago
guerrilla 5y ago
I can recommend that iPhone video he links to[1]. It shows the switching of the mainboard between two identical Apple phones and goes through all the somewhat surprising consequences, including them both claiming not to be using genuine Apple hardware anymore. 1. https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg
- mettamage 5y ago
  How is this legal? This should be illegal.
  - criddell 5y ago
    It's like that to protect consumers. If you want your phone to have cryptographic integrity, then all the parts have to share keys. Otherwise, if the police wanted to look inside your phone, they could easily bypass all the cryptography with a custom part that either extracts the keys from the other components or disables encryption entirely. It's an unfortunately consequence of a secure device.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      Sounds like terrible design if that's necessary. Also absurd that the owner can't re-sign hardware given that they should have a master key.
      - throwaway2048 5y ago
        Its not necessary, its just a smokescreen apple can use to shut out third party repairs.
      - criddell 5y ago
        All designs are trade-offs. The number of people that want to swap a logic board is pretty tiny. It would probably be pretty hard to justify the extra expanse based on customer benefit. Apple seems to know what they are doing considering how happy their customers are.
shadowgovt 5y ago
I've been using a ThinkPad X1-Carbon that came with Linux pre-installed straight from Lenovo, and I've really had no major issues with it. If someone's looking for a solid Linux laptop experience, that's where I'd steer them these days. Author appears to be complaining (among many other things) that attempting to retrofit machines that came pre-installed with Windows to run GNU/Linux doesn't work well, and... It never has. Not once. I can name zero experiences in my lifetime doing that where it was relatively painless. I perceive this to be not a "machines aren't flexible" problem, but a "machines come out of the factory with ten thousand complex configurations tuned to work correctly with each other, and when you rip out a piece as large as 'the operating system,' half those configurations are now tuned wrong (and the OS was holding another half of them)" problem. On this ThinkPad, the only time I've run into issues is when I switched out the window manager. Turns out, the WM's configuration is implicitly tied to a half-dozen features (audio selection power management, etc.) that don't "just keep working" if you replace it. Should I be blaming Ubuntu for that, or should I accept that some pieces of the OS are big enough to be disruptive if you swap them out? Nobody is optimizing for the "get some hardware and retrofit an entirely new OS into it" use case; that way will forever be a gravel-strewn road. If you want a smooth road, get the OS you want from the factory.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  I haven't had any issues installing Ubuntu based Linux on Thinkpads that came with Windows and I've been doing it for over a decade. Maybe the fingerprint scanners didn't work, I never tried those. But otherwise seamless near as I can tell. Granted it's mostly older Thinkpads but still. 0 problems.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    The fingerprint scanner almost never work in Windows either. A recent win10 update for some reason removed fingerprint drivers for me and I didn't even notice it.
  - kiwijamo 5y ago
    I bought a ThinkPad X1 that came with Windows. Had no trouble changing that to a dual boot arrangement with Debian. Kept that for a few months until I realized I was going weeks without booting into Windows. Ended up making the switch to a full Arch Linux installation with no Windows. Has worked well. I have a fingerprint scanner but haven't bothered with it—that worked poorly under Windows anyway so never used even under Windows.
arendtio 5y ago
A few day ago, I wondered if it would be possible to build a good Laptop around a Raspberry Pi? Not the best performance but modular, upgradable and well supported by the Linux kernel.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  It's all been done before (story of my life). https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/the-best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/the-best-raspberry-pi... https://all3dp.com/2/best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits-projects/ https://all3dp.com/2/best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits-projects/
  - sprash 5y ago
    None of those projects support the new compute module which is the only viable option for day to day desktop use. The only attractive looking device from Waveshare has a fake touchpad and can't be used for anything serious either. There is a real niche for RaspPi CM4 compatible Laptops which is not yet filled. (And all other options are useless children's toys for "tinkering".)
    - foxfluff 5y ago
      What does the CM offer that the Pi4 doesn't have?
- tomcooks 5y ago
  Pi top is a real product
- kiwijamo 5y ago
  I have a Raspberry Pi 4. If you use the official distro, which includes all the hacks to make the hardware function, it works well yes but only barely. Try any other distro and it does not work very well since Linux itself doesn't actually have a lot of suppprt upstreamed. I have to use binary blobs, tweak lots of knobs etc to make simple things like video playback work. Some (all?) distros still recommend 32-bits due to limited support for 64-bits still. Quite eye opening for me as i always thought support for Raspberry Pi was of a high standard. The reality couldnt be further than the truth. Ironically I have a Lenovo which works well out of the box with no blobs or weird hacks on Arch or Debian (despite no official support for my particular model that I know of). The latter is what I would describe as "well supported by the Linux kernel". Certaintly not Raspberry Pi.
einpoklum 5y ago
Lenovo is a for-profit corporation which believes it will make more money by not supporting non-Windows OSes, particularly Linux-kernel-based operating systems, properly. "We need to talk" suggests Lenovo is somehow answerable to its users/customers; this is fundamentally not the case. Anyway, the thing that annoys me the most is the terrible keyboards we've been getting, especially since X240. Keys need travel distance, and should not be ruined in order to make the laptop thinner. We use those things to work on, not to show off. ... and here I go myself, ranting as though Lenovo cares.
- siva7 5y ago
  A double negation is pretty hard to read.
- nomay 5y ago
  If laptops came with non-Windows OSes are cheaper, I think it will have its market share. In some markets, people just don't consider paying for Windows a thing.
forgotpwd16 5y ago
Truthfully, I found hard following the article. It seems many topics (hardware, software, ethics, Microsoft monopoly, smartphones, and others) smashed together. Most of them being generic commentary on current status quo (e.g. UEFI).
- mmu_man 5y ago
  Then I wasn't clear enough because it's all linked together for me. The UEFI mention was not just for a commentary, but to back the discussion on the monopoly. And I think you missed some conclusions I drew from all this that I don't recall reading anywhere else.
  - forgotpwd16 5y ago
    Well, if you're the author, it will be weird if it didn't made sense to you. The argument I'm making isn't that all this information is out of place, as indeed they all link together, but that many of those (specifically the things I mentioned) apply to every manufacturer. So it's kinda strange when the subject is about Lenovo and read all those which aren't specific to Lenovo.
    - mmu_man 5y ago
      Yes they apply to the others as well, but also to them, and fact is it's Lenovo machines I bought. And for once the lesson is not directed at Apple. But I understand it can be disconcerting. I should probably try to rework this generic part into its own article someday.
jwildeboer 5y ago
Disclaimer: I am a Red Hatter. We get Thinkpads/Lenovos since years, we install RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Fedora on them. I started back a long time ago with a X31, after that a X40, an X220, a X230, X1 2nd gen and am now on a X1 carbon 7th gen. They have been rock solid for me, except the x220 which loved to bork the hard drive for unknown reasons every 4-6 months. Lenovo has listened and acted on our requests in a very good way, the Linux support has become better and better over the years, IMHO and experience. So no, this rant does notbresonate with me and my 16 years experience at all. No offence. Just a different experience.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing your experience. As a distro maintainer, do you have access to the complete datasheets of the entire laptop in order to provide decent drivers? Maybe even the source code of the reference Windows drivers? If so, maybe you could "pressure" your contacts over at Lenovo to get them published once and for all so systems/distros can provide decent support?
  - jwildeboer 5y ago
    Most drivers are upstreamed anyways, nowadays. We get some early access and work with that, but the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source, so feel free to use that code at any time.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source Are you saying there is 0 binary blobs involved in running a modern Thinkpad? I find that hard to believe (although i would love it). I'm guessing there's a few blobs in the kernel tree itself, and even more firmware blobs the kernel doesn't even know about. On the topic of how Linux deals very little with actual hardware on modern machines, i really enjoyed this talk called "It's time for operating systems to rediscover hardware" [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo
pdimitar 5y ago
Rant: I am only 41 and don't care about these articles anymore. I was able to explain the problems this article raises, to a 20-year girl who knows almost nothing about technology, in a 15-minute conversation. And she agreed the current situation spells doom for future buyers and that she still wants to be able to buy a pink laptop and put whatever CPU, GPU and RAM she wants in it. Quote from her: "Why must I buy a VAIO or Acer when I need some more colors? Why can't I buy a lime green ThinkPad and then replace the CPU?". So look, we all get it just fine. Can you start doing something? This endless virtue signalling will not achieve anything, is this not glaringly obvious at this point? You all really underestimate the unbridled relentless greed of the shareholders and their servants. They will NEVER stop. If you want a change, pioneer it. And to the general HN audience: please understand most devs and hardware guys here are almost literal slaves. A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Please start using your free bandwidth to do good! Patting yourself on the back like "hey, I can articulate the problems, I am helping!" is just you being a quiet accomplice in a future state of affairs where there will be no recourse. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: get off my lawn. :P Seriously though, those articles don't help nothing. Awareness has been raised a long time ago. It's time for action. Corporations only understand one thing: coercion. Especially if you hit them in the wallets. Everything else they ignore.
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
  Your attitude is so much better than your peers (on this website)... They simply will not comprehend it because they're on a lower wavelength where their sense of responsibility is lacking.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  And uninformed anonymous downvotes is what will make me leave HN one day. Sure, stay in your filter bubble and downvote opinions you don't like.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
xanaxagoras 5y ago
There's a reason I went with an overpriced Clevo from System76. It has it's warts and the build quality really isn't there for how much I paid. But I turn it on, and everything works. I enjoyed compiling the kernel and chasing down little problems on desktop linux machines when I was a lot younger, but now I just want a laptop I can rely on and get things done with. Without knowing any specifics and not really caring, it was easy to glean that Lenovo had burned the ThinkPad's reputation some time ago when I was planning my last purchase... I'm having a hard time sympathizing with the author. > The LCD. Ok, 3k was a bad idea, I hate not seeing individual pixels This is sort of representative of TFA for me. He's whining too much.
0x_rs 5y ago
I share the author's frustration with making graphics work on older machines with nvidia dGPUs. My Sandy Bridge thinkpad absolutely cannot boot without hanging and perpetually writing to disk since their major "additions" in 5.12 and later, no matter the dozen hours spent and configurations, kernel parameters setup; I've reached the conclusion it's impossible and put the problem to rest for now with an older version. Alas, this an industry problem, not limited to nu-lenovo by any means, from poor designing of the devices in question (on the Optimus implementation above: it's absolutely terrible and prone to all sorts of issues, because you can't just rip the damn nvidia chip off) to cutting corners. When producing these devices, do manufacturers often think, let alone care, if they will be used in the future after a decade or more? There's no stimuli to do so, after all, no gain from it.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  Maybe this will help: https://github.com/Thisisguillermo/NVIDIA_OPTIMUS_LINUX https://github.com/Thisisguillermo/NVIDIA_OPTIMUS_LINUX
shell0x 5y ago
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad L380 and it's the worst laptop I haver ever owned. When I put it on my lap and I hit the wrong spot, it freezes and only turning it off and on again fixes the issue. I sent it to the Lenovo support center in HK once, but the problem has never been fixed. Long story short, as a guy who moves a lot internationally, Apple and Lenovo are the only companies offering global warranty and after my horrible experience with Lenovo, I'll be back to Apple! Thinkpad quality has been terrible after the sale to the China-based Lenovo. Maybe my experience would have been better with the T or X series though.
owenversteeg 5y ago
I personally gave up on Lenovo after trying several of their modern laptops and running into constant issues. The last one was a C940 specced out to the max, and for such a premium laptop costing nearly $2000 it was an embarrassment. Windows came with bloatware, I ran into several issues trying to run Linux, the battery life was so-so, and the performance wasn’t even that impressive. I realized that modern Lenovos aren’t even that repairable or upgradeable (even the Thinkpad line) so hell… might as we’ll get a Mac right? I picked up a used M1 Macbook Air for $700 and have been absolutely blown away. Battery life, performance, display, speakers, the thing blows away any Thinkpad I’ve owned. Sure, impossible to repair or upgrade, but it’s not like you can change out the CPU/RAM/graphics on modern Thinkpads either.
- MonaroVXR 5y ago
  Story is kinda true, but you didn't give any nuances which make it worse to than it may be. C940 is Yoga from the top of my head a consumer laptop. X1 carbon and other thin models have soldered RAM. T, E, L and P models have serviceable RAM.
  - owenversteeg 5y ago
    That’s fair, some models do still have serviceable RAM. From picking random models on Lenovo’s site and googling them it seems to be the majority of advertised models that are non-upgradeable. That said, even if you can swap it out, a RAM upgrade only gets you so far. Your display, webcam, CPU, wifi, graphics etc all stay behind. In my opinion the age of upgrading laptops easily is behind us - for years, adding RAM and an SSD was the way to rejuvenate an old laptop, but even if a modern laptop is upgradeable I don’t see these things really helping much.
spamizbad 5y ago
Personally, unless you need discrete graphics, I would strongly recommend people who want to use Linux, Haiku-os etc to just get a Framework laptop. The manufacturer actually provides enough detail on their hardware to facilitate OS support. I have one and it's great. I've basically lost interest in every other PC manufacturer's laptops, but I will conceded I don't require larger screens or nVidia/AMD graphics.
josteink 5y ago
> So yes, you can install GNU/Linux, but it’s far from an easy experience. All thanks to Microsoft. And to the companies writing those buggy firmwares. Has he even tried installing Linux on it before publishing this rant? It works OOB on pretty much all machines, even with secure boot turned on. Worst case scenario, you can just turn secure boot off. I seriously don’t get why people are still making a big deal out of this, 10 years or more since this was first arriving as a concern. As it turned out, there’s still nobody preventing us from installing Linux on our PCs. Instead we only have one extra option if we want to improve the security of our boot process.
jbj 5y ago
I got one of their new linux supporting machins through their reseller, Digital River Ireland Ltd. I set it up with dualboot since I hadn't run windows a while and needed a windows for a few things anyway. Must say that windows 10 is not totally bad, but why must it be so blinky, and have an appstore with a front page of colourful games, and even autodownload candy crush? anyways, the lenovo machine is greay with ubuntu, and the trackpoint work with both middle click as well as scroll, something I could only pick one of in wimdows.

156 points by southerntofu 5y ago

Trying to cut through all the right to repair stuff to get to the actual ThinkPad issue... it seems that the GPU has Linux support issues because it uses PCIe in a way the Linux driver doesn't expect. But isn't that an Nvidia problem? Is Lenovo really going to work with Nvidia to make sure they have a working driver for Linux? That's asking a lot for a very small segment of thinkpad users.

forgotpwd16 5y ago
>Is Lenovo really going to work with Nvidia to make sure they have a working driver for Linux? If they say they provide Linux support, they have to. Else they're misleading potential buyers.
syshum 5y ago
They do have ThinkPads that are certified to work with Linux, ship with linux, and have Nivida Graphics The W541 is not one of those models... Lenovo has one of the best websites for looking up their models, and configuration. I am not aware of any other vendor that has anything like it. Pick a model, then filter by OS. The T15 as an example has plenty of models with Linux Support https://psref.lenovo.com/ https://psref.lenovo.com/

CRConrad 5y ago

> Free Software = OpenSource + ethics Yup, makes sense. Because Open Source was originally created as Free Software minus the ethics bit.

southerntofu 5y ago

Some discussion on Haiku forums: https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/ok-lenovo-we-need-to-talk-haiku-project/11414/63 https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/ok-lenovo-we-need-to-talk-hai... Beyond the GNU/Linux debate [0], there's some interesting points in there. [0] Today i learnt: Haiku should not be called GNU/Haiku because Haiku is the entire system and not just the kernel, and rms (to my surprise) approves this interpretation

matheusmoreira 5y ago
Linux is the operating system. It manages hardware and provides system calls. It's possible to write software that Linux boots directly into, no user space at all. This GNU/Linux stuff comes from POSIX's definition of operating system. That piece of paper says operating systems have all these little commands like cp, mv, etc. Therefore, GNU gets to be part of the operating system because it provides those commands. It doesn't have to be this way though, especially on Linux where one can just trash all the GNU stuff and obtain or write custom software directly on top of the kernel.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  > This GNU/Linux stuff comes from POSIX's definition of operating system Technically true. But do you run a lot of software that works without glibc and other userland utilities? > on Linux where one can just trash all the GNU stuff and obtain or write custom software directly on top of the kernel True, yet most of us still use a GNU/Linux distribution.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    Just don't forget that it goes both ways. GNU today's is much more relevant than GNU 30 years ago thanks to the Linux community. Would not surprise me if 80% of recent GNU contributions come from the Linux crowd.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > But do you run a lot of software that works without glibc and other userland utilities? Yes. I made a few of these utilities for my own use. I actually started developing a Linux system call library to facillitate this but then I discovered the kernel developers themselves already made one for their own tools. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/include/nolibc/nolibc.h https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/tools/include/... People can include this awesome header file in a freestanding C project and enjoy making 100% dependency-free Linux binaries. No C standard library cruft anywhere. It's amazing. You could boot Linux directly into one of these things just by writing init=/my/program in the kernel command line. You'd need to do some init stuff like mounting procfs and sysfs but it's totally fine. I've even seen graphical software running this way with OpenGL ES on top of kernel interfaces for mode setting and buffer management, people could even make video games that run this way. I really want to get into this.

mikro2nd 5y ago

"ORIX Atmos... 1989... and it's still working" Heed this and weep.

bitcraft 5y ago

I never understood how some people seem to not know that Lenovo and IBM are not the same company. When Lenovo, a completely different company, bought the rights to manufacture IBM products in 2005, the Think* brand was no longer IBM. The author states, eventually, his point being that Lenovo lost it’s mojo, but it never had any. The Thinkpads people remember with mojo were the IBM ones, and some Lenovo branded ones after the handoff, but that’s really just residual “mojo” from the old teams and processes. Lenovo was never good, and really isn’t now, and has a long record of bad behavior.

kmlx 5y ago
i think the fact that people associate Lenovo “thinkpads” with quality products says a lot about how much “mojo” the ibm “thinkpad” brand had. and in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Also to a point Lenovo had one of the original ThinkPad labs. Don't know how much is still there tough but that's why Lenovo is not just Lenovo to me.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Just because people liked them doesn’t mean they were profitable.
- toast0 5y ago
  > in hindsight that ibm > lenovo deal was a bad deal for ibm. IBM got out of an industry they didn't want to be in, but they still have a lot of positive brand feelings, and a large stake in Lenovo (not sure if they still hold that). Where's the bad for IBM? They sold off their PC server line to Lenovo about a decade later, so clearly the first deal wasn't too bad. IBM seems to want to focus on Enterprise, so getting rid of things that individuals use, while still having relationships to sell them (because individuals exist in the enterprise), seems to work for them. After IBM bought SoftLayer, Lenovo servers started showing up instead of SuperMicro.
- 5y ago

guerrilla 5y ago

I can recommend that iPhone video he links to[1]. It shows the switching of the mainboard between two identical Apple phones and goes through all the somewhat surprising consequences, including them both claiming not to be using genuine Apple hardware anymore. 1. https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg https://youtu.be/8s7NmMl_-yg

mettamage 5y ago
How is this legal? This should be illegal.
- criddell 5y ago
  It's like that to protect consumers. If you want your phone to have cryptographic integrity, then all the parts have to share keys. Otherwise, if the police wanted to look inside your phone, they could easily bypass all the cryptography with a custom part that either extracts the keys from the other components or disables encryption entirely. It's an unfortunately consequence of a secure device.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Sounds like terrible design if that's necessary. Also absurd that the owner can't re-sign hardware given that they should have a master key.
    - throwaway2048 5y ago
      Its not necessary, its just a smokescreen apple can use to shut out third party repairs.
    - criddell 5y ago
      All designs are trade-offs. The number of people that want to swap a logic board is pretty tiny. It would probably be pretty hard to justify the extra expanse based on customer benefit. Apple seems to know what they are doing considering how happy their customers are.

shadowgovt 5y ago

I've been using a ThinkPad X1-Carbon that came with Linux pre-installed straight from Lenovo, and I've really had no major issues with it. If someone's looking for a solid Linux laptop experience, that's where I'd steer them these days. Author appears to be complaining (among many other things) that attempting to retrofit machines that came pre-installed with Windows to run GNU/Linux doesn't work well, and... It never has. Not once. I can name zero experiences in my lifetime doing that where it was relatively painless. I perceive this to be not a "machines aren't flexible" problem, but a "machines come out of the factory with ten thousand complex configurations tuned to work correctly with each other, and when you rip out a piece as large as 'the operating system,' half those configurations are now tuned wrong (and the OS was holding another half of them)" problem. On this ThinkPad, the only time I've run into issues is when I switched out the window manager. Turns out, the WM's configuration is implicitly tied to a half-dozen features (audio selection power management, etc.) that don't "just keep working" if you replace it. Should I be blaming Ubuntu for that, or should I accept that some pieces of the OS are big enough to be disruptive if you swap them out? Nobody is optimizing for the "get some hardware and retrofit an entirely new OS into it" use case; that way will forever be a gravel-strewn road. If you want a smooth road, get the OS you want from the factory.

mythrwy 5y ago
I haven't had any issues installing Ubuntu based Linux on Thinkpads that came with Windows and I've been doing it for over a decade. Maybe the fingerprint scanners didn't work, I never tried those. But otherwise seamless near as I can tell. Granted it's mostly older Thinkpads but still. 0 problems.
- zibzab 5y ago
  The fingerprint scanner almost never work in Windows either. A recent win10 update for some reason removed fingerprint drivers for me and I didn't even notice it.
- kiwijamo 5y ago
  I bought a ThinkPad X1 that came with Windows. Had no trouble changing that to a dual boot arrangement with Debian. Kept that for a few months until I realized I was going weeks without booting into Windows. Ended up making the switch to a full Arch Linux installation with no Windows. Has worked well. I have a fingerprint scanner but haven't bothered with it—that worked poorly under Windows anyway so never used even under Windows.

arendtio 5y ago

A few day ago, I wondered if it would be possible to build a good Laptop around a Raspberry Pi? Not the best performance but modular, upgradable and well supported by the Linux kernel.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
It's all been done before (story of my life). https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/the-best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/the-best-raspberry-pi... https://all3dp.com/2/best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits-projects/ https://all3dp.com/2/best-raspberry-pi-laptop-kits-projects/
- sprash 5y ago
  None of those projects support the new compute module which is the only viable option for day to day desktop use. The only attractive looking device from Waveshare has a fake touchpad and can't be used for anything serious either. There is a real niche for RaspPi CM4 compatible Laptops which is not yet filled. (And all other options are useless children's toys for "tinkering".)
  - foxfluff 5y ago
    What does the CM offer that the Pi4 doesn't have?
tomcooks 5y ago
Pi top is a real product
kiwijamo 5y ago
I have a Raspberry Pi 4. If you use the official distro, which includes all the hacks to make the hardware function, it works well yes but only barely. Try any other distro and it does not work very well since Linux itself doesn't actually have a lot of suppprt upstreamed. I have to use binary blobs, tweak lots of knobs etc to make simple things like video playback work. Some (all?) distros still recommend 32-bits due to limited support for 64-bits still. Quite eye opening for me as i always thought support for Raspberry Pi was of a high standard. The reality couldnt be further than the truth. Ironically I have a Lenovo which works well out of the box with no blobs or weird hacks on Arch or Debian (despite no official support for my particular model that I know of). The latter is what I would describe as "well supported by the Linux kernel". Certaintly not Raspberry Pi.

einpoklum 5y ago

Lenovo is a for-profit corporation which believes it will make more money by not supporting non-Windows OSes, particularly Linux-kernel-based operating systems, properly. "We need to talk" suggests Lenovo is somehow answerable to its users/customers; this is fundamentally not the case. Anyway, the thing that annoys me the most is the terrible keyboards we've been getting, especially since X240. Keys need travel distance, and should not be ruined in order to make the laptop thinner. We use those things to work on, not to show off. ... and here I go myself, ranting as though Lenovo cares.

siva7 5y ago
A double negation is pretty hard to read.
nomay 5y ago
If laptops came with non-Windows OSes are cheaper, I think it will have its market share. In some markets, people just don't consider paying for Windows a thing.

forgotpwd16 5y ago

Truthfully, I found hard following the article. It seems many topics (hardware, software, ethics, Microsoft monopoly, smartphones, and others) smashed together. Most of them being generic commentary on current status quo (e.g. UEFI).

mmu_man 5y ago
Then I wasn't clear enough because it's all linked together for me. The UEFI mention was not just for a commentary, but to back the discussion on the monopoly. And I think you missed some conclusions I drew from all this that I don't recall reading anywhere else.
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  Well, if you're the author, it will be weird if it didn't made sense to you. The argument I'm making isn't that all this information is out of place, as indeed they all link together, but that many of those (specifically the things I mentioned) apply to every manufacturer. So it's kinda strange when the subject is about Lenovo and read all those which aren't specific to Lenovo.
  - mmu_man 5y ago
    Yes they apply to the others as well, but also to them, and fact is it's Lenovo machines I bought. And for once the lesson is not directed at Apple. But I understand it can be disconcerting. I should probably try to rework this generic part into its own article someday.

jwildeboer 5y ago

Disclaimer: I am a Red Hatter. We get Thinkpads/Lenovos since years, we install RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Fedora on them. I started back a long time ago with a X31, after that a X40, an X220, a X230, X1 2nd gen and am now on a X1 carbon 7th gen. They have been rock solid for me, except the x220 which loved to bork the hard drive for unknown reasons every 4-6 months. Lenovo has listened and acted on our requests in a very good way, the Linux support has become better and better over the years, IMHO and experience. So no, this rant does notbresonate with me and my 16 years experience at all. No offence. Just a different experience.

southerntofu 5y ago
Thanks for sharing your experience. As a distro maintainer, do you have access to the complete datasheets of the entire laptop in order to provide decent drivers? Maybe even the source code of the reference Windows drivers? If so, maybe you could "pressure" your contacts over at Lenovo to get them published once and for all so systems/distros can provide decent support?
- jwildeboer 5y ago
  Most drivers are upstreamed anyways, nowadays. We get some early access and work with that, but the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source, so feel free to use that code at any time.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > the resulting code is always upstreamed and open source Are you saying there is 0 binary blobs involved in running a modern Thinkpad? I find that hard to believe (although i would love it). I'm guessing there's a few blobs in the kernel tree itself, and even more firmware blobs the kernel doesn't even know about. On the topic of how Linux deals very little with actual hardware on modern machines, i really enjoyed this talk called "It's time for operating systems to rediscover hardware" [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo

pdimitar 5y ago

Rant: I am only 41 and don't care about these articles anymore. I was able to explain the problems this article raises, to a 20-year girl who knows almost nothing about technology, in a 15-minute conversation. And she agreed the current situation spells doom for future buyers and that she still wants to be able to buy a pink laptop and put whatever CPU, GPU and RAM she wants in it. Quote from her: "Why must I buy a VAIO or Acer when I need some more colors? Why can't I buy a lime green ThinkPad and then replace the CPU?". So look, we all get it just fine. Can you start doing something? This endless virtue signalling will not achieve anything, is this not glaringly obvious at this point? You all really underestimate the unbridled relentless greed of the shareholders and their servants. They will NEVER stop. If you want a change, pioneer it. And to the general HN audience: please understand most devs and hardware guys here are almost literal slaves. A good chunk of you (especially Americans) are privileged beyond what like 80% of us here will ever have, in terms of income and job security. Please start using your free bandwidth to do good! Patting yourself on the back like "hey, I can articulate the problems, I am helping!" is just you being a quiet accomplice in a future state of affairs where there will be no recourse. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot: get off my lawn. :P Seriously though, those articles don't help nothing. Awareness has been raised a long time ago. It's time for action. Corporations only understand one thing: coercion. Especially if you hit them in the wallets. Everything else they ignore.

temptemptemp111 5y ago
Your attitude is so much better than your peers (on this website)... They simply will not comprehend it because they're on a lower wavelength where their sense of responsibility is lacking.
pdimitar 5y ago
And uninformed anonymous downvotes is what will make me leave HN one day. Sure, stay in your filter bubble and downvote opinions you don't like.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

xanaxagoras 5y ago

There's a reason I went with an overpriced Clevo from System76. It has it's warts and the build quality really isn't there for how much I paid. But I turn it on, and everything works. I enjoyed compiling the kernel and chasing down little problems on desktop linux machines when I was a lot younger, but now I just want a laptop I can rely on and get things done with. Without knowing any specifics and not really caring, it was easy to glean that Lenovo had burned the ThinkPad's reputation some time ago when I was planning my last purchase... I'm having a hard time sympathizing with the author. > The LCD. Ok, 3k was a bad idea, I hate not seeing individual pixels This is sort of representative of TFA for me. He's whining too much.

0x_rs 5y ago

I share the author's frustration with making graphics work on older machines with nvidia dGPUs. My Sandy Bridge thinkpad absolutely cannot boot without hanging and perpetually writing to disk since their major "additions" in 5.12 and later, no matter the dozen hours spent and configurations, kernel parameters setup; I've reached the conclusion it's impossible and put the problem to rest for now with an older version. Alas, this an industry problem, not limited to nu-lenovo by any means, from poor designing of the devices in question (on the Optimus implementation above: it's absolutely terrible and prone to all sorts of issues, because you can't just rip the damn nvidia chip off) to cutting corners. When producing these devices, do manufacturers often think, let alone care, if they will be used in the future after a decade or more? There's no stimuli to do so, after all, no gain from it.

MonaroVXR 5y ago
Maybe this will help: https://github.com/Thisisguillermo/NVIDIA_OPTIMUS_LINUX https://github.com/Thisisguillermo/NVIDIA_OPTIMUS_LINUX

shell0x 5y ago

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad L380 and it's the worst laptop I haver ever owned. When I put it on my lap and I hit the wrong spot, it freezes and only turning it off and on again fixes the issue. I sent it to the Lenovo support center in HK once, but the problem has never been fixed. Long story short, as a guy who moves a lot internationally, Apple and Lenovo are the only companies offering global warranty and after my horrible experience with Lenovo, I'll be back to Apple! Thinkpad quality has been terrible after the sale to the China-based Lenovo. Maybe my experience would have been better with the T or X series though.

owenversteeg 5y ago

I personally gave up on Lenovo after trying several of their modern laptops and running into constant issues. The last one was a C940 specced out to the max, and for such a premium laptop costing nearly $2000 it was an embarrassment. Windows came with bloatware, I ran into several issues trying to run Linux, the battery life was so-so, and the performance wasn’t even that impressive. I realized that modern Lenovos aren’t even that repairable or upgradeable (even the Thinkpad line) so hell… might as we’ll get a Mac right? I picked up a used M1 Macbook Air for $700 and have been absolutely blown away. Battery life, performance, display, speakers, the thing blows away any Thinkpad I’ve owned. Sure, impossible to repair or upgrade, but it’s not like you can change out the CPU/RAM/graphics on modern Thinkpads either.

MonaroVXR 5y ago
Story is kinda true, but you didn't give any nuances which make it worse to than it may be. C940 is Yoga from the top of my head a consumer laptop. X1 carbon and other thin models have soldered RAM. T, E, L and P models have serviceable RAM.
- owenversteeg 5y ago
  That’s fair, some models do still have serviceable RAM. From picking random models on Lenovo’s site and googling them it seems to be the majority of advertised models that are non-upgradeable. That said, even if you can swap it out, a RAM upgrade only gets you so far. Your display, webcam, CPU, wifi, graphics etc all stay behind. In my opinion the age of upgrading laptops easily is behind us - for years, adding RAM and an SSD was the way to rejuvenate an old laptop, but even if a modern laptop is upgradeable I don’t see these things really helping much.

spamizbad 5y ago

Personally, unless you need discrete graphics, I would strongly recommend people who want to use Linux, Haiku-os etc to just get a Framework laptop. The manufacturer actually provides enough detail on their hardware to facilitate OS support. I have one and it's great. I've basically lost interest in every other PC manufacturer's laptops, but I will conceded I don't require larger screens or nVidia/AMD graphics.

josteink 5y ago

> So yes, you can install GNU/Linux, but it’s far from an easy experience. All thanks to Microsoft. And to the companies writing those buggy firmwares. Has he even tried installing Linux on it before publishing this rant? It works OOB on pretty much all machines, even with secure boot turned on. Worst case scenario, you can just turn secure boot off. I seriously don’t get why people are still making a big deal out of this, 10 years or more since this was first arriving as a concern. As it turned out, there’s still nobody preventing us from installing Linux on our PCs. Instead we only have one extra option if we want to improve the security of our boot process.

jbj 5y ago

I got one of their new linux supporting machins through their reseller, Digital River Ireland Ltd. I set it up with dualboot since I hadn't run windows a while and needed a windows for a few things anyway. Must say that windows 10 is not totally bad, but why must it be so blinky, and have an appstore with a front page of colourful games, and even autodownload candy crush? anyways, the lenovo machine is greay with ubuntu, and the trackpoint work with both middle click as well as scroll, something I could only pick one of in wimdows.