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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

#481

Post by coldtea »

coldtea wrote: post #428
marcosdumay wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or get to learn something about key management. A centralized key is not secure. A secure key is not centralized. If you want any security, the computer owner must be the only person allowed to install keys on the boot sequence - what is the exact opposite of what MS mandates.

> Or get to learn something about key management. A centralized key is not secure. A secure key is not centralized. A centralized key IS secure, just not AS secure as a not private key. (That's theoritically: in practice it can be even safer than a private key, because most end users are incompetent in managing their keys much more than the central entity would usually be). And it's wrong to think it as a key in the…

Correction: "A centralized key IS secure, just not AS secure as a private key".

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

#482

Post by Piskvorrr »

jewbacca wrote: post #129
Piskvorrr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Hello again MS, for a moment I was getting worried about you straying from your proven strategy.

Seriously. If this does turn out to be intentional on Microsoft's part, then there goes every last shred of trust and goodwill they've spent the last 10 years rebuilding. (and, honestly, were finally succeeding at, to the point where I'm very close to willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here: how the hell could the benefits of such a thing come anywhere near to outweighing the amount of damage it would do?)

Meh. For me, the last drop was "You WANT the X, admit it! (Not like you have a choice, we force-upgraded your computer anyway, no matter what you chose)" This is just Business As Usual.

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

#484

Post by vladimir-y »

rch wrote: post #440
CaptSpify wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have is: What's the alternative? I've yet to see a decent linux-capable computer. I'm hoping someone can point me to one

Someone pointed me to the Dell XPS 15 yesterday (i7, 32GB, 1TB SSD, 4K touch screen). Dell's business practices were a big contributor to the current situation, but I'm getting close to overlooking that.

Recent XPS related topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12289479

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

#485

Post by byuu »

colemickens wrote: post #461
byuu wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has already used SecureBoot to lock out Linux 'offer better security' on their phones and tablets. Is it really such a stretch for people to be afraid that they're going to require desktop/laptop vendors to leave SecureBoot on in the future? (and conveniently only recognize the key for Windows?) Probably our best saving grace against that is how rapidly mobile is cannibalizing the desktop/laptop market. Pro…

Yes, I do think it's a stretch considering their agreement with OEMs requires OEMs allow for diabling SecureBoot and require allowing users to enroll their own keys. The PC market and mobile phone markets are very different, with a huge precedent already being set that mobile ARM devices are locked down. Are you equally upset that iPhones and virtually all Android devices also have locked down bootloaders? On top of…

> their agreement with OEMs requires OEMs allow for diabling SecureBoot

Nobody ever goes from one extreme to the other. Restrictions are added a little at a time to minimize the outrage.

Look at Gatekeeper on OSX. "Oh it's just an option", then it's enabled by default. "Oh you can just turn it off." Now it automatically turns itself back on every 30 days. Their next move will likely be to require all apps to be signed. Again, if I'm wrong, great! As someone who releases OSX software but won't pay Apple for the privilege, I hope I am.

Further, you don't always have to go 100% restrictive to achieve the same effect. Look at web browsers and self-signing certificates. Sure, you can still accept and install them, but it's been made such a pain that nobody can really pull off a self-signed website.

What serious OSX developer is going to release unsigned software that requires people to go in and turn Gatekeeper off every 30 days? It might as well be mandatory for all the choice developers looking to earn a living on that platform have these days.

> Are you equally upset that iPhones and virtually all Android devices also have locked down bootloaders?

Yes! There's not really much of a market for alternative phone operating systems; but even still, I buy Android because I can sideload regular applications without hacking ("jailbreaking") my own property.

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

#486

Post by Udo »

paulddraper wrote: post #459

To quote Ashtefere on Reddit, > * The linux drivers for the NVME chipset in this laptop do not yet exist. No one is stopping them from being built. > * Signature edition PC's must be locked into their highest performing mode in bios - this happens to be the NVME raid mode in the bios > * Windows can't even see this because the chipset is so new, thus the extra driver needing to be loaded. > * Lenovo have not yet buil…

I wish I could upvote this a thousand times, you're the only one here who saw it apparently, and nobody seems to care that the premise of this whole "scandal" is entirely fabricated.

It feels strange to be defending Microsoft and Lenovo like this, but Microsoft most likely had nothing to do with this specific configuration. There is no version of Windows that comes with a driver for this RAID controller, just the same as there is no Linux driver yet.

While I might be tempted to believe that locking to RAID mode is a deliberate choice by Lenovo to take options away from users, the target here is not Linux. The target is Joe User who now can't (re-)install Windows on his machine. That's the freedom they're trying to take away.

Of course it doesn't help that Lenovo's marketing/support departments are utterly incompetent in communicating this, and switch to "guilty mode" by default.

By the way, actually locking out Linux would be an easy feat: just require a Microsoft-signed secure boot loader in UEFI. That's the real horror scenario, not this RAID driver nonsense.

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

#487

Post by vetinari »

pjmlp wrote: post #422
vetinari wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wasn't an OS to talk about. The 16kB ROM contained a BASIC interpreter, which was ignored by most applications you would load from the tape. If you wanted to talk to the hardware (joystick, printer), you did the I/O yourself.

The 16kB ROM BASIC interpreter was the OS! And you surely could not overwrite it.

Not from inside; but an external device could remap the address range (not that it was made often, except for D40/D80 which did that, replacing microdrive code with a floppy one) and the ZX128, which actually had two ROM banks.

There weren't many useful things in the ROM, if you were writing your application. Maybe the font table and tape loader. On the other hand, if you were able to ignore the ROM, you got few bytes more of RAM, because you were able to repurpose the "system variables" area.

The biggest "problem" with ROM that you were unable to replace it with RAM (until next reset, for example), thus taking precious 16kB out of 64kB address range.

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

#488

Post by sevensor »

scholia wrote: post #470
sevensor wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It would still be useful to distinguish between innovations that hundreds of millions of people use -- including me -- and your personal requirements. Sadly, the whole IT world does not actually revolve around those ;-)

Sure, and I'm careful not to impose my value judgements about whether an innovation is actually interesting to the question of whether it's an innovation. But personally I find that improving touch interfaces is this decade's version of adding a wheel to the mouse.

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

#489

Post by scholia »

sevensor wrote: post #488
scholia wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would still be useful to distinguish between innovations that hundreds of millions of people use -- including me -- and your personal requirements. Sadly, the whole IT world does not actually revolve around those ;-)

Sure, and I'm careful not to impose my value judgements about whether an innovation is actually interesting to the question of whether it's an innovation. But personally I find that improving touch interfaces is this decade's version of adding a wheel to the mouse.

You said Linux was "a real threat, especially with MS failing to innovate."

This was an unrestricted claim that ignored a massive amount of Microsoft innovation. I pointed out that you were wrong and now you're quibbling about another of your personal opinions. Why make the same mistake twice?

Seems to me that the whole Microsoft Windows ecosystem -- across Azure, PCs, games consoles, smartphones, and iOS and Android devices -- shows far more innovation than Linux.

If you want to provide a list of Linux innovation to compare with my incomplete list above, I'd be interested to see it.

Be even better if you could address the whole market, without restricting it to your personal peccadilloes.

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

#490

Post by khedoros »

sliken wrote: post #472
khedoros wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's a setting that causes the hardware to behave differently, and which would need driver support to function.

Right, but it also breaks official microsoft windows media. How much sense does that make?

For RAID hardware, it's not that unusual to have a device that isn't supported by standard Windows install media. To install Windows, you'd put the Intel-provided driver on another medium (or slipstream it into the Windows one), and click "load driver" in the installation GUI.

Lenovo apparently wants to treat that computer as an appliance; if someone borks their installation enough that even a system restore won't fix it, it's a call to Lenovo support, and a bill if the machine's out of warranty.

For customers whose Windows installations are working correctly, it's access to a faster, more power-efficient driver. That's how it makes sense, IMO.

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