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Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

lenovo.com

61–70 of 129 posts

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#61
post #59

That's nice and all. But I'd much rather just build PCs in-house for work. It is just a serviceability issue. These systems often incorporate nonstandard power supplies, motherboards and such, making it difficult to repair and in many cases, impossible to upgrade piecemeal. Since building my most recent work PC in 2012, I have: Upgraded the memory. Added hard drives, including a couple SSDs recently. Upgraded the pow…

For a PC to use at home, I agree 100%. If you're the kind of person that's likely to upgrade RAM or components I wouldn't recommend this for personal use.

This is geared toward enterprise use. Think, corporate IT department that needs to support dozens of these. They want a service contract and they'll probably replace the lot of them in five years. Having some weird proprietary components in there isn't a problem. After all, if they need help troubleshooting they'll have direct access to an engineer at Lenovo.

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#62
post #41
post #4

I wonder if there is some market pressure from players like System76? For anyone coming along- I managed two Lenovo ThinkStation P7 series towers and these cases (the P5 series looks almost identical) are really great. Everything in the case is screw-less / tool-less. I can't remember how the M.2 drives mounted- they may have had a screw but it was a great case.

Speeaking of System 76: is Pop_OS easier to use than Mint? Does it support things like watching Netflix and DVDs without needing to look for packages and apps to install?

Yes, way easier to use personally. For netflix, it works out of the box.

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#63
I'm still rocking the T520 thinkpad from 2012 with quad core i7. I thought I'd replace it in 2020, but here we are. I really don't see anything that is really any faster or has the linux compatiblity. Hoping it changes soon, I've used it as my main work machine all these years.

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#64

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2890166/lenovo-to-flus... I have no trust for Lenovo after this incident.

️ Things happen. It's embarrassing to have to disclose such a thing to the public, but they did. I don't recall anything nefarious and they owned up - to at least some extent. That is more than a lot companies can say. Is that the ONLY reason why you dis Lenovo? Because if so, it makes them that much more attractive in my book of flippant remarks

> Is that the ONLY reason why you dis Lenovo?

They installed spyware. That is more than enough reason to lose trust. IIRC, they did it more than once too[1].

If that isn’t cause enough, what is? Would it take pre-installed ransomware to lose trust?

https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html?m...

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#65
post #63

I'm still rocking the T520 thinkpad from 2012 with quad core i7. I thought I'd replace it in 2020, but here we are. I really don't see anything that is really any faster or has the linux compatiblity. Hoping it changes soon, I've used it as my main work machine all these years.

I use a Thinkpad carbon X1 with Debian. Fantastically portable with all day battery life. Just make sure to check the Arch wiki (regardless of which Linux you install) for a few special commands needed to make everything work properly.

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#66
post #61
post #59

That's nice and all. But I'd much rather just build PCs in-house for work. It is just a serviceability issue. These systems often incorporate nonstandard power supplies, motherboards and such, making it difficult to repair and in many cases, impossible to upgrade piecemeal. Since building my most recent work PC in 2012, I have: Upgraded the memory. Added hard drives, including a couple SSDs recently. Upgraded the pow…

For a PC to use at home, I agree 100%. If you're the kind of person that's likely to upgrade RAM or components I wouldn't recommend this for personal use. This is geared toward enterprise use. Think, corporate IT department that needs to support dozens of these. They want a service contract and they'll probably replace the lot of them in five years. Having some weird proprietary components in there isn't a problem. A…

Exactly, and if they have enough volume, they can really nail down any lingering bugs or problems in the chipsets or firmware and it turns into a rock-solid system. Anything else and the manufacturer (Lenovo, Dell, HP) lose money on their support costs.

If I was responsible for buying workstations for an office, I would definitely choose a standard business configuration over building it myself. If I expected those workstations to be running Linux, I would definitely attempt to buy one that was designed to work well with Linux for the same reasons.

Note: This is also why some companies buy Dell/Lenovo/HP servers even though they cost more. Support. The components are all very well tested together, and any bug you encounter you can expect other people to have encountered and complained about as well, and hopefully should have a fix on the way (or already available through a firmware upgrade). I've also heard this is why Dell drives cost so much. They make sure to have stock around for you years later in case you need replacements, so you can replace with the exact same drive model.

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#67
post #63

I'm still rocking the T520 thinkpad from 2012 with quad core i7. I thought I'd replace it in 2020, but here we are. I really don't see anything that is really any faster or has the linux compatiblity. Hoping it changes soon, I've used it as my main work machine all these years.

I use a Thinkpad carbon X1 with Debian. Fantastically portable with all day battery life. Just make sure to check the Arch wiki (regardless of which Linux you install) for a few special commands needed to make everything work properly.

The carbon never supported the docking stations right? I always liked a docking station so I can drop the laptop on it and have all my desk monitors come to life. But seems like docking stations aren't really popular anymore either... (which is one reason I never went with system76)

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

️ Things happen. It's embarrassing to have to disclose such a thing to the public, but they did. I don't recall anything nefarious and they owned up - to at least some extent. That is more than a lot companies can say. Is that the ONLY reason why you dis Lenovo? Because if so, it makes them that much more attractive in my book of flippant remarks

> Is that the ONLY reason why you dis Lenovo? They installed spyware. That is more than enough reason to lose trust. IIRC, they did it more than once too[1]. If that isn’t cause enough, what is? Would it take pre-installed ransomware to lose trust? https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-virus.html?m...

I get were you are coming from the hardware is still good and thinkpads are the notebooks with the most bios modding support in the community. coreboot/disable IME etc.

Re: Lenovo now shipping Ubuntu on high end workstations in the US

#70
post #5

This is great but I'd still just format the drives and load from an image I put onto a thumb drive. Who knows what new glassfish-esq malware they have integrated into the factory OS.

The point is if they are offering it preinstalled it means they are putting more effort and support behind making it work well on their hardware. Linux hardware support has come a long ways but there are still occasional rough patches. At this point in my life I take zero joy in trouble shooting them so official Linux support is a big deal

You don't make Linux work on the hardware at the Desktop level so much as you choose hardware with chipsets that don't flout spec or have else have (open) active support from their vendors.

In my experience, very little troubleshooting on Linux is due to Linux being problematic and more oddities and quirks with hardware whose drivers were written only with a particular Windows version in mind.

To test, just boot a "problem" distro in a VM. If you don't encounter the same issues, it's the hardware.

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