Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

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What a shame. I was about to recommend Dell as an alternative, based on GitLab's public documentation that recommends it for GitLab employees and indicates decent linux support. [1]

I made the mistake of sticking with Lenovo due to the expectation of good Linux support, and while most stuff works, I can't say I'm particularly impressed. Aside from a loud fan (not sure if that is due to poor Linux support or just a property of the device), the service in the Lenovo online store was impressively bad. Wrong descriptions of the hardware, insane shipping dates that were pushed out over and over, refusing to simply remove the unavailable component without cancelling the order and going to the back of the queue, and last but not least, Lenovo defrauded me by first having me jump through hoops to claim their 'best price warranty' promise then simply refusing to honor it altogether.

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/business-technology/team-m...

I've 3 ThinkPads and never really dealt with Lenovo.

The reason why Linux users love ThinkPads is because they're mostly supported OOB by the kernel (not by Lenovo themselves). This wasn't true of most other laptops for quite a few years.

I bought my T61 in 2008, and the ThinkPad recommendation was old then. Things change with time. I believe most laptops these days are rather standardized, so linux support is ubiquitous.

My point being, it's not really Lenovo supporting Linux but the linux kernel drivers that for a number of years supported ThinkPad OOB where all(?) other brands required a lot of fiddling.

(And you probably just need to install thinkfan if you have full speed fans. Check out the ThinkWiki for your models.)

> I bought my T61 in 2008, and the ThinkPad recommendation was old then. Things change with time. I believe most laptops these days are rather standardized, so linux support is ubiquitous.

No, it is not. "Modern standby" on most laptops can't be disabled and will discharge your battery overnight. Also, non-Intel WiFi is buggy 90% of the time. And don't get me started on fingerprint readers...

To be fair, Lenovo is now pushing out firmware updates via fwupd, employs at least one engineer to work on Linux support for ThinkPads (Mark Pearson, does he have a team?) and apparently also asks their component suppliers for Linux compatibility now. They might not do all or even most of the work, but even the requirement to certify your devices with Ubuntu and Red Hat stickers is a positive change compared to the early days or vendors like ASUS who just ignore Linux entirely.

One problem I had with the Dell shipped linux was the abusive EULA/TOS that shipped with it. Just a heads up. I bet Lenovo is doing something similar.

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