Ask HN: Lenovo encouraging Chromebook users to install Linux?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39137451

by vector_spaces • 2 years ago

51 26 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I was surprised to see that Lenovo has a guide to installing the Linux distro of your choosing on a Lenovo Chromebook device. I guess the cynic in me expects that companies want you to use whatever OS is bundled with the hardware rather than encouraging users to use the hardware the way they'd like -- or at least that they wouldn't want to make it easy to overwrite the ChromeOS install by providing a helpful how-to!

Can anyone think of why Lenovo would do this? I would expect that this would potentially draw the ire of Google, but surely Lenovo has thought this through and maybe knows Google doesn't care enough? Just curious if anyone can speak to Lenovo's incentive calculus here

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/install-linux-chromebook/

(Ps: the guide is somewhat out of date -- for those curious, this seems the way forward for Chromebook users looking to install a Linux distro of their choosing https://docs.chrultrabook.com/

Seems the galliumos project mentioned in the Lenovo link is now discontinued)

mindcrime• 2 years ago

Lenovo secretly want Linux to catch on big-time, because they HATE the amount of leverage Microsoft have over them due to the ubiquity of Windows on so many of their devices. But they have to be careful to not embrace Linux too openly for fear of Microsoft retaliation. So they're in a bit of a catch-22 situation.

I'm sorry, I won't say any more than that due to the possibility of transgressing some long forgotten NDA. But if you can run down any current or former Lenovo employees I doubt you'll have a hard time confirming this. Also note that this was true circa 2019 or so, and went at least as high as the #1 exec in the company's PC division.

Note: they may also resent Google for similar reasons, but I can't speak to that from first hand knowledge.

lnxg33k13• 2 years ago

I don’t think that would be the case for Microsoft to retaliate, I suspect there might be a whole bunch of regulators just waiting this abuse of dominant position just to stop the spread of competition

tgma• 2 years ago

LOL. That would be naïve.

They just have to retaliate in such a way that keeps plausible deniability with the regulator.

kragen2• 2 years ago

lenovo is chinese, microsoft is usa

jseliger• 2 years ago

It's surprising to me that all the OEMs aren't working hard, and haven't been working hard for the last 15+ years, to maximize Linux support and improve the Linux UI/UX experience. It seems like it wouldn't have been that hard to do, and still wouldn't, and would help move the OEMs towards owning their own destinies.

My working thesis is that most OEMs are focused almost entirely on this quarter's results, and not on improving their situations years from now.

xtracto• 2 years ago

Imagine if Dell, HP and Lenovo made some kind of Personal Computing alliance and put some good millions to make Linux Mint work flawlessly in all of their computers. No frills, no .conf edit, just install the "certified mint" and sleep, Webcam, wifi, fingerprint, etc etc working with closed source blobs, I don't care.

That would be a wet dream for me.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

If that was true they would have had more than time to actually ship a Lenovo Linux with Thinkpads.

Yet in most regions it isn't even an option on the business store.

jeffbee• 2 years ago

Why do you have to twist this into a weird conspiracy? It says this is a FAQ. The simplest explanation is that actual users asked these questions, so Lenovo wrote these answers.

NoZebra120vClip2• 2 years ago

While that is the origin of the acronym, it is not indicative of how FAQs are compiled today, especially by corporate support. It's merely a category of document to them.

The first entry in these instructions is how to enable the built-in Linux subsystem in ChromeOS. So, there's their token effort to see people keep it around.

The last entry in the document is a link to their systems which come preloaded with Linux. You see, if someone enjoys toying with Linux on an underpowered/non-certified device, they will love upgrading to a full-fledged machine that can really cope with all they want to do now.

I purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad T580 in 2018 because it was certified for RHEL. They also have a range that's certified for Ubuntu. Despite my device's certification, it came preloaded with Windows 10, but I did run flawless Fedora for several years, before reverting. That Lenovo is still going strong, and one of a pair of "daily drivers". (My other one is a Chromebook! Yes, I run Linux on it, every day!)

thatguysaguy• 2 years ago

My personal laptop setup has been arch on a Lenovo Thinkpad for about 7 years now. It's been great!

kiwijamo• 2 years ago

My experience across 2 Lenovo machines is that Linux support on Lenovo hardware is pretty much 1st class compared to other major PC brands. Not surprised they've done this to be honest.

neelc• 2 years ago

The reality is, many Lenovo customers buy their laptops just for Linux. In turn, Lenovo knows they need to cater to Linux users. Same with Dell.

It's not most of their customers, but it's the most loyal customers. Customers who won't switch to HP, Asus, or Surface.

In comparison, HP knows only a few of their customers use Linux, so they can be mostly-Windows with so-so Linux support.

Before switching to a M2 MacBook Air, my HP Spectre's Linux support was behind my work ThinkPad. Not being a huge ThinkPad person myself is why I bought many Spectres. But for most people, if a ThinkPad works better, they'll buy it.

dralley• 2 years ago

It also helps that Lenovo is the primary corporate laptop supplier to Red Hat.

cowboysauce• 2 years ago

I would expect that this would potentially draw the ire of Google

Chromebooks are pretty open. See official documentation at https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/dev... which directs to a third party site dedicated to installing alternative OSs and firmware.

rr808• 2 years ago

I wonder if Lenovo being a Chinese company has a lot of customers that really dont want a close source American OS.

tadfisher• 2 years ago

Not really, just that lots of developers choose ThinkPads for Linux support, so they have teams dedicated to Linux support across their hardware. Most of it is patching firmware bugs.

davidhyde• 2 years ago

The Linux distros I have used do not seem to turn on full blast anti-virus scanning and search indexing when your laptop goes idle. Not sure about ChromeOS but this is something that causes terrible fan noise on Windows when you expect the machine to be silent. I never could get it under control way back when. Lenovo may not like the negative reviews about fan noise and battery life when it’s generally a software problem.

xet7• 2 years ago

I installed Debian to Chromebook:

https://github.com/xet7/chromebook

mickelsen• 2 years ago

x86-only :c

Ask HN: Lenovo encouraging Chromebook users to install Linux?

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