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Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

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Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#371

Post by leereeves »

UK-AL wrote: post #356
leereeves wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying the story is wrong and they haven't "locked [the SSD] in a proprietary RAID mode that Linux doesn't understand"?

Theres a difference between explicitly locking out linux, and using a piece of hardware that doesn't have linux driver.

According to a comment there, it's not hardware, it's a BIOS setting.

> I've been able to successfully get past Lenovo's lock through direct bios flashing. I'm looking into better solutions, hopefully I can find a way to do this without an external programmer. I was going to keep people updated from the Lenovo forum, but as this is no longer an option I will keep people updated from here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/53ri0m/warning_micro...

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#372

Post by debacle »

JadeNB wrote: post #365
debacle wrote: post #323

I've been boycotting Lenovo for years. Their build quality is low quality compared to other vendors (Asus, Dell, MSI) and then there's stuff like this.

In a spurt of dissatisfaction with Apple, I tried a few years ago to buy a PC, and bought a Lenovo precisely because I'd heard such good things about their build quality. My monitor had a prominent dead pixel and my spacebar didn't work, so my impression wasn't positive, but I thought that it was just bad luck. Has the community perception of Lenovo's build quality changed, or did I just get the wrong idea in the fir…

You got the wrong idea in the first place, I think. For the first few years after the IBM split, Thinkpads were of pretty good quality. Now they're pretty poor, and Lenovo's other offerings are generally crap.

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#373

Post by zx2c4 »

arca_vorago wrote: post #362
zx2c4 wrote: post #344

The community's reaction seems absurd to me. For whatever reason, the device only exposes some sort of RAID controller to the OS, and for whatever reason, there's no working option for exposing a more standard AHCI interface instead. The problem is that Linux doesn't (yet) have a driver for that RAID controller. Okay, great. Linux doesn't yet support particular piece of hardware. News at 11. Just like usual, if you w…

It seems absurd because you complete glossed over the most important part: " and for whatever reason, there's no working option for exposing a more standard AHCI interface instead." This isn't linux's fault for not supporting some non-standard raid driver, this is lenovos fault for not allowing users to change the bios settings to non-raid. Also, just because you are been using a Thinkpad sucessfully (which is largel…

> This isn't linux's fault for not supporting some non-standard raid driver, > this is lenovos fault for not allowing users to change the bios settings to non-raid.

Lenovo made a computer that exposes hardware to the OS for which Linux does not yet have drivers. They could have exposed a more standard interface, but they didn't. I guess this is their fault, okay. But again, what's the big deal? What's next? You'll be upset when Synaptics releases a new touchpad with a different protocol, for which Linux doesn't yet have a driver? You'll scream and complain, "they could have supported the other protocol! they could have unlocked it! it was just a few bits inside the internal SPI flash!" Okay. But they didn't. Now write a driver if you want it to work.

I'd be upset if they used some kind of crypto secure boot situation to lock down the device. This seems very far from that, however.

> Also, just because you are been using a Thinkpad sucessfully > (which is largely been immune from the issues we are talking > about compared to the rest of lenovo line), to use that to > dismiss the very real issues regarding lenovo's recent moves > is disingenuous at best.

I didn't mean to dismiss anything except for some comments I've seen in which people said Thinkpads are awful on Linux. Thought I'd chime in to offer a differing experience.

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#374

Post by zx2c4 »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #360
zx2c4 wrote: post #344

The community's reaction seems absurd to me. For whatever reason, the device only exposes some sort of RAID controller to the OS, and for whatever reason, there's no working option for exposing a more standard AHCI interface instead. The problem is that Linux doesn't (yet) have a driver for that RAID controller. Okay, great. Linux doesn't yet support particular piece of hardware. News at 11. Just like usual, if you w…

ThinkPad and IdeaPad are notionally just two product lines with different target markets, but everything I've seen related to them suggests that the difference is more like buying from two separate companies.

Interestingly, technical support for ThinkPad still appears to be provided by IBM, which is pretty nice. When parts come in the mail they have the IBM security tape on it. It's got that old school professional enterprise feeling.

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#375

Post by sevensor »

scholia wrote: post #296
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not the year of the Linux desktop, but it's not far off. I've successfully switched both parents to Linux and non tech at our company run completely on Linux. It's a real threat, especially with MS failing to innovate.

This failure to innovate presumably includes touch screens, Windows Hello biometric sign-in, running sandboxed apps from a Windows Store, integrated Cortana AI, Notification Center, cloud integration via OneDrive, Continuum mode, Device Guard, Universal apps that work across PCs, tablets, phones and the Xbox One, Xbox app for streaming live games to a PC or Tablet, touch-optimized Office apps on Windows, iOS and Andr…

So I understand that these features took a great deal of engineering effort, but except for sandboxing I have zero interest in any of them. So maybe it's innovation, but I don't see a whole lot of innovation that I care about. In particular, many of these features deal with touch interfaces, which I have no desire ever to use for serious work. And why would I ever run Windows if I didn't have to for work?

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#377

Post by sevensor »

sergiosgc wrote: post #331
sevensor wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, and I'm a long-time ThinkPad advocate with a stack of older models in my closet going back to the R31. I've always thought they had superior keyboards and pointing devices, and every one of my old ThinkPads runs Arch beautifully. (Granted, I didn't bother installing X on the R31.) Given the opportunity to pick out a new laptop for work last week, I passed them by, and that was before I was aware of this news.…

Honest question: what is the alternative? Apple is not. Dell has finicky hardware. HP has crappy laptops. Asus is hit and miss. When my x1 dies, I think I'll just continue and get the then current generation x1...

For work, I just ordered a Dell Precision, the one that supports Ubuntu. We'll see how it turns out; I'll chime in on the next HN laptop thread. (Seems like we have one every week or so.) It certainly looks better than Lenovo at this point.

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#378

Post by xur17 »

easytiger wrote: post #125
alphadevx wrote: post #122

Get a Developer Edition XPS 13 from Dell instead, comes with Linux pre-installed. I have one and they are awesome, if manufacturers support Linux they get my $.

I bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon (most recent gen) and really regret it for a great many reasons. Wish I had gone for the XPS. Actually what swayed me was the very slightly larger screen.

I just purchased a Lenovo X1 Yoga with an OLED screen (very similar to the X1 Carbon, but with a touch screen). I went back and forth between the XPS 13 and the X1, but the slightly bigger OLED screen, better keyboard, and touchpoint swayed me. Hoping I don't regret my decision..

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#379

Post by edoceo »

tunap wrote: post #348
josteink wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except windows 10s drivers are compatible with windows 8 and 7, since the driver model haven't changed since then. So using that install media you can extract the drivers and install older windows versions anyway. So it's a pretty crappy conspiracy :)

To clarify, the extracted drivers will load for 7/8/8.1 without editing an inf file?

You will have lots of manual digging to find the right drivers and will likely need to edit inf files.

The API/ABI for drivers didn't change between 7,8,10

Re: Linux can’t be installed on a recent Lenovo laptop

#380

Post by wyager »

vanderZwan wrote: post #288

This looks like a timely moment to bring up Cory Doctorow's The coming war on general computation talk: > So today we have marketing departments who say things like "we don't need computers, we need... appliances. Make me a computer that doesn't run every program, just a program that does this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing Xbox games, and make sure it doesn't run programs that…

Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End is a good sci-fi novel (partially) about potential long-term consequences of the war on general purpose computing.
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