SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Lenovo has confirmed that several of its Yoga laptops are refusing to install Linux-based operating systems. The Chinese firm said the issue had been caused by its switch to a new storage system, which reads and records data faster than normal.
There had been confusion after one of its employees posted that Linux was blocked because of an "agreement with Microsoft". However, Lenovo has denied enforcing a deliberate ban.
The restriction affects PCs sold with the "signature edition" of Windows 10. The term refers to a promise that "junk" software is not pre-installed alongside the OS to avoid slowing down its operation.
The Lenovo rep's response (linked to in the excerpt) seems to have been given before the company PR people got involved.
Hot Hardware , offers an alternative perspective:
Yesterday, Lenovo confirmed that Linux cannot be installed on the machine because there are no OS-specific drivers for the device's proprietary RAID configuration. Given that this machine has been designed to work with Windows 10, it should come as no surprise that Lenovo probably didn't want to devote too much of its resources to developing alternative drivers for this particular model.
To be more specific, Lenovo had this to say:
To support our Yoga products and our industry-leading 360-hinge design in the best way possible we have used a storage controller mode that is unfortunately not supported by Linux and as a result, does not allow Linux to be installed. Beyond the controller setup limitation, other advanced capabilities of the Yoga design would likely not work with current Linux offerings.
Lenovo does not intentionally block customers using other operating systems such as Linux on Yoga or any of its devices and is fully committed to providing Linux certifications and installation guidance on a wide range of suitable products.
In a statement provided to The Register , Lenovo further clarified its position on RAID support in Linux for the Yoga 900, writing, "Unsupported models will rely on Linux operating system vendors releasing new kernel and drivers to support features such as RAID on SSD."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @02:51AM
Yeah! Linux can't even give you a BSOD. I miss those. My Linux hasn't crashed since I started using it 10 years ago. And I'm sick and tired of not having to go through driver or dll hell every time I plug something new in because it just works. Dammit Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @05:08AM
you haven't crashed your computer in 10 years?
you're doing something wrong. even if it is linux :)
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday September 23 2016, @01:20PM
My Linux hasn't crashed since I started using it 10 years ago.
Try making a move in Google Street View, I find that does the trick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @08:15PM
Linux has traditionally been the last to get driver support. WinModems come immediately to mind. It is much better these days and linux is usually what many companies test first on as it is cheap and easy to do.
So yeah if some OEM decides to do something oddball with their hardware linux usually is not the first one to get support. It is usually whichever OS the box ships on. Even then it usually is some sort of slipstream junk.