Last month was the controversy over some Lenovo Yoga laptops not working with Linux that was first alleged to be due to a Microsoft "Signature PC" requirement that later turned out to be incorrect. Well, the good news now is that Lenovo has issued a BIOS update and should allow for better Linux compatibility.
Following up on Last month's discussion.
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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:31AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nerdfest on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:02AM
Not so much incorrect, as denied. From what I can tell, there was no reason to disable it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @03:56AM
They screwed with it so the default windows drivers would not recognize it as an AHCI device. Apparently the default windows/intel drivers are buggy and this was their workaround. At least that's the impression I got from reading between the lines.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MadTinfoilHatter on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:57AM
They screwed with it so the default windows drivers would not recognize it as an AHCI device. Apparently the default windows/intel drivers are buggy and this was their workaround.
That's the official claim, yes. The problem is that as I pointed out in the previous discussion about this: That's only a reason to change the BIOS default, not a reason to disable AHCI completely, which was what they did. In fact they seem to have even implemented some kind of check, so that even dropping to the UEFI shell and enabling it from there wouldn't work. If someone at Lenovo actually wrote extra code to make it impossible to enable AHCI, it make this a bona fide anti-feature. Make no mistake: Nobody except from Microsoft would benefit from having this feature disabled.
I'll say it again: The only party that had anything to gain from this (shady backroom deals notwithstanding) was Microsoft. They got to lock the user to their preferred version of their OS, and they got it without having to use draconian methods like UEFI bootloader signing, which might draw the attention of antitrust enforcement people in corners of the world they haven't yet been able to buy. This way it's: "Hey, it's Linux' own fault. It's missing the necessary driver." M$ have always been good at making others seem incompatible, and it saddens me that a large chunk of the media seems to have bought that excuse. [cio.com]
So why is that an excuse and the talk about RAID divers a red herring? Because the drivers here are not true RAID drivers - they're fakeraid drivers. Linux has never had much of a reason to implement fakeraid, because it already has a fully functioning softraid, and fakeraid doesn't really provide any benefit over that. If you have fakeraid you also have AHCI (in a sane backroom-dealings-free world anyway) and can just use that with softraid. Personally, I'm not taking off my tin foil hat just yet...
(Score: 3, Touché) by Marand on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:07PM
Commenter going by the alias MadTinfoilHatter chooses to fabricate elaborate shady back-room dealings and conspiracy theories instead of assuming someone just fucked up and did something dumb.
Yep, name checks out. Carry on. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:55PM
are you unable to read? it's not "fucking up" if you go out of your way to do something that's completely unnecessary. They are concubines of MS, period.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @08:35AM
No clit mouse
Chicklet keyboard
Useless gimmicks
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday October 29 2016, @02:10PM
No wireless, less space than a nomad. Lame.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:16PM
Indeed. May as well buy a mac
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @12:27AM
congratulations. now, how about removing the bios/uefi whitelists that prevents people from using non-lenovo (re)branded wwan adapters? Pages and pages of forum posts with no official response OR FIX from lenovo. You advertise a minipci port and then use firmware to restrict it, without disclosing that before the sale. If you want to restrict the use of a port, you have to make a proprietary port/slot. You can't just lock down a standard interface, as interoperability is the whole point of the standard! That's fraud and you damn well know it! It also guarantees you lose customers as it's completely disrespectful. This stupid shit doesn't fly in 2016! It used to go over in the 90's when IBM was doing it, but you won't get away with it now. Stop copying the bad/embarrassing behavior of US companies like lemmings and do the right thing!