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posted by martyb on Friday September 23 2016, @01:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the fail-to-plan-OR-plan-to-fail? dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday September 23 2016, @05:29AM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday September 23 2016, @05:29AM (#405432) Journal

    The "R" of course is short for "redundant." While I've not personally experienced a failed SSD, I've read in online forums that when they fail, they can suddenly become totally unreadable—a more troublesome failure mode than what usually happens to mechanical drives, in which only a portion of the drive becomes unusable. Assuming that's true, a RAID configuration that allows one drive to fail completely without loss of data strikes me as something that could be worthwhile. Because an SSD consumes so little power, I would expect an extra drive to have little effect on battery life, although if it were in the form of a 2.5-inch drive it would add noticeably to bulk and size. Personally, I wouldn't mind the burden.

    Laptops with a single "hard drive" bay are the norm, but having two bays is nothing new (how many this Lenovo has, I don't know).

    The added reliability possible with RAID could be more valuable in a consumer laptop than in a server. A server is typically kept indoors with power conditioning, filtered air, and controlled temperature and humidity. Often there's someone tending to it, who may make regular backups of its data and check SMART messages. The "life" of a laptop can be like: used at café, coffee spilled on keyboard; used outdoors, rain falls on keyboard; left in the driveway, driven over by car; carried in backpack, zipper opens and laptop falls to pavement. I don't perceive consumers as keeping thorough backups or keeping aware of the condition of their computers. RAID could provide extra reliability that could lessen the chance of data loss for them.

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  • (Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Friday September 23 2016, @06:57AM

    by Bogsnoticus (3982) on Friday September 23 2016, @06:57AM (#405448)

    >"Laptops with a single "hard drive" bay are the norm, but having two bays is nothing new (how many this Lenovo has, I don't know)."

    According to the spec sheet, it has one drive bay.

    So there is no benefit to having it hard-coded to a single drive raid array compared to having it set to ahci. Which begs the question, if there is no real performance benefit, why do it except to screw with linux?

    --
    Genius by birth. Evil by choice.