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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @02:59AM
To be fair, everything coming out of Lenovo since 2008 or so has been a steaming pile of consumer-grade shit, Thinkpads included. Lenovo got big because people heard that Thinkpads were good and wrongly assumed that still held true and that it carried over to the rest of their product line.
They ruined the Thinkpad line, they ruined what was left of Motorola after Google sold it (namely, a stock Android experience with promise of monthly updates) and now they are shitting all over Linux. This, combined wih turning Thinkvantage drivers into bloatware and getting caught three times in one year injecting malware on products sold to consumers including hiding it in he fucking BIOS so it would come back if you did a clean install ... Lenovo is either grossly incompetent or actively malicious against their consumers.
Why the fuck do people keep parroting the old, "Get a lenovo" line anymore?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lentilla on Friday September 23 2016, @04:43AM
There is a saying "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king".
So:
Why the fuck do people keep parroting the old, "Get a lenovo" line anymore?
Likely because Lenovo has been consistently at least as good, if not better than the competition.
Purchasing a laptop is a crap-shoot at the best of times. Using Lenovo as a baseline is as good a place to start as any.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @07:54AM
Asus and Acer are good enough and have gotten better. Build quality has gone up for most laptops as SSD, fanless, and Ultrabook features have been adopted. There's no reason to stick with Lenovo if you don't like their practices, and everyone else has not heard of the issues and doesn't care about Linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 23 2016, @01:45PM
Not really. Your comment just shows that you really haven't been paying attention. You are coming from a place of ignorance, which only spreads mis-information regarding Lenovo.
At no point since the Lenovo acquisition, has a Lenovo machine lead benchmarks in its class. Since 2008, Lenovo has systematically shed every trace of the IBM-acquired Thinkpad except for the name (T61 - rollcage in the lid removed and removal of all IPS displays; T500 - 5:4 and 4:3 ratios removed; T510 - 16:10 replaced with 16:9 ratio; T520 - same as T510 except option for AES-NI added; T530 - removal of 7-row keyboard layout and replacement with chiclet keys; T540 - removal of the track point buttons, Thinkpads slate grey instead of black, removal of centered keyboards and trackpads to add a number pad). Meanwhile, during this same span, we've seen HP's Dreamcolor display become the industry standard for high-quality displays in a laptop instead of Flexview; the return of consumer-grade IPS displays starting with the Macbook Pro in 2012 and quickly replicated elsewhere; the option of non-widescreen displays on options from Google and Microsoft; the addition of captive screws for easier repair on the Latitude and Elitebook lines; Dell workstation-class laptops becoming as thin as the Macbook Air while offering Xeon processors WITHOUT throttling or the cooling issues that plague the W530 and up Thinkpads while also retaining properly centered keyboards and trackpads for better ergonomics. We've seen Lenovo try to remain relevant with the re-introduction of the P50 and P70 only to see them have poorly designed cooling systems and cheap TN-quality displays. We've seen Dell open a github repository with open-source drivers for their Linux-based laptops, while Lenovo doubled-down on Microsoft. And this is all *before* the hidden malware in the BIOS, the acknowledged certificate hijacking and now not playing nice with Linux users. Why are you still recommending them over anything else? Post-purchase rationalization? What is the matter with you?
Lenovo has become a consumer-grade company. This is a result of the Lenovo acquisition, and paranoia over Chinese backdoors causing government and corporate to abandon anything labeled "Think" over the past decade. Is that really warranted? Probably not. Not really Lenovo's fault, but they were abandoned by anybody important and are now following the money by targeting consumers instead of the business world; unfortunately, that market is a race to the bottom.
TL;DR - everybody else got better while Lenovo got worse. Stop apeing the old "Lenovo is good" garbage.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 23 2016, @12:03PM
I agree with you. I've had Thinkpads the last 15 years after too many bad experiences with Dells and HPs. My IBM Thinkpad was great, and the best laptop I ever owned; I actually formed an emotional attachment to the thing, which is something I never do with machines. The first Lenovo laptop was fine, but lesser than the IBM one. The one I'm on now is a step down from the last Lenovo laptop. The trend is clear.
Washington DC delenda est.