Lenovo Exits pre-Installed Linux Desktop Business

[lophiomys]

Lenovo Exits pre-Installed Linux Desktop Business

[GomJabbar]

These ThinkPads were well-reviewed and widely-praised by both the media and desktop Linux fans. Despite this, with less than year in the mass-market, Lenovo has decided to pull pre-installed Linux ThinkPads from its virtual store shelves.

Gorman did add that, “We will be delivering new Linux offerings on our new Lenovo servers, and IdeaPad netbook education models, scheduled for release in September and October respectively.” The IdeaPad S9, the model with Linux,, however, will not be available at all to the U.S. market.

Lenovo did not offer any explanation for these moves.

Could it be the 800-pound Gorilla throwing it's weight around again?

[jdhurst]

<snip>
Could it be the 800-pound Gorilla throwing it's weight around again?

Probably (taken as a whole), people are a very pragmatic lot. An OS is just that, and it needs to run the applications we have and want. XP does that, Vista is starting to mature (but business has largely shunned it), and the remaining OS's don't run what many of us need. All the modern systems have their place and following, but I guess Lenovo is just going with the maintstream. ... JDH

[lophiomys]

I feel very negative about these news.

If, say Kubuntu, wouldn't work on the next generation of Thinkpads
that would be another little showstopper for me.

I HOPE that Lenovo will put up a team of skilled Linux developers,
who then would unofficially submit drivers and software to the
various OSS projects and to ThinkWiki.org
so that things would just work on new Thinkpads.
IMO that would be sufficient make everyone happy.

[Harryc]

Well, I bought one when they were available. It's a shame they are getting out of this market. As far as the usability of SLED, I think it's just as good if not better than windows for general business use.

[spuddog]

I think it was probably more of a straight business decision. They probably felt the return for the for the time and money invested was not enough.
A lot of people buy computers with an operating system installed and the first thing they do is format and put the operating system and programs they want on fresh.
That's what I do.

Scott

[jdhurst]

<snip>
A lot of people buy computers with an operating system installed and the first thing they do is format and put the operating system and programs they want on fresh.
That's what I do.

Scott

People with specific needs and desires and with the required skill may do that, but the overriding majority of individuals I see in my business buy a computer expecting it to run what they wish to load. Most individuals that I deal with are not technical and don't change their OS. That was the issue I was raising earlier.
... JDH

[spuddog]

Yes, I agree. I should have made it more clear that I meant people who had a clear preference for an operating system. I know lots of Linux/Unix people and they don't agree on what flavor to use.

Scott

[jdhurst]

<snip> I know lots of Linux/Unix people and they don't agree on what flavor to use.

Scott

/me chuckles. That's for sure! I have tried a dozen different flavours of Linux. Most of them have worked quite well, but I seemed to have settled on Ubuntu for my Linux machine.
Thanks. ... JDH

[Zender]

It's probably not that bad:
Lenovo drops web sales of Linux machines

[arion]

They set this to fail.

In the mindset of people most prefer RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, debian and ubuntu. Most people are not interested in SuSe at all especially for servers.

[Marin85]

Most people are not interested in SuSe at all especially for servers

I don´t know about servers, but I know a lot of people interested in SuSe more than in any other Linux distro or windows.