After years of offering Linux as an option for some of its workstation computers, Lenovo has announced that starting later this month all of its ThinkStation desktop and ThinkPad P Series laptops will be available with a choice of Windows, Ubuntu LTS, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
To be clear, there was nothing stopping customers from purchasing a system with Windows and then replacing the operating system with their GNU/Linux distribution of choice. But now that Lenovo is offering certified support for Ubuntu and Red Hat, you can be pretty sure you won’t have to jump through hoops to make sure you have all the proper drivers for your hardware.
The company says it’ll also be offering upstream device drivers for inclusion in the Linux kernel, which should help with long-term support (and which should also help if you opt for a different Linux-based operating system).
Earlier this year, Lenovo also partnered with the Fedora project to offer some laptops with Fedora pre-installed. That includes versions of the Lenovo ThinkPad P53Â and ThinkPad P1 Gen 2. Fedora is a free and open source operating system is a community-based project sponsored by Red Hat.
That’s nice. Are the Linux ones cheaper than the Windows ones?
I like that there are more options when it comes with major OEMs that support pre-configured Linux notebooks especially when they upstream any patches they use.
I’m currently eyeing the Dell XPS 13 though. I prefer smaller notebooks. I visit this site for a reason.
And WiFi blob too? And hdmi and disk and motherboard firmware?
They’re not promising to go all-in on FOSS. They’re certifying two Linux distros that will be available on their systems. So… no.
From the press release: “What’s more, Lenovo will also upstream device drivers directly to the Linux kernel, to help maintain stability and compatibility throughout the life of the workstation.” So i would assume at the very least the wifi driver will be open sourced, but certainly not mobo firmware.
Linux drivers do not need to be open source.