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September 8, 2008

According to various reports, Lenovo appears to have quietly abandoned offering Linux as a pre-installation alternative. None of the company's 49 ThinkPad and IdeaPad notebook models, nor its many ThinkCenter and IdeaCenter desktops can currently be ordered with Linux. This has some in the Linux community puzzled and disappointed.

However, Lenovo does offer four high-end ThinkStation workstation models without any commercial operating sysem software installed at the factory. Nevertheless, all of its other systems now have Windows installed by default.

So now, in order to purchase one of Lenovo's systems, you have to pay for a Microsoft Windows operating system license.

As early as 1999, IBM offered Red Hat Linux pre-installed on some select ThinkPad models. And, prior to acquiring IBM's full personal computer business in 2004, Lenovo -- then China's largest PC maker -- offered Red Hat Linux pre-installed on some systems as well.

After acquiring IBM's PC business, Lenovo's first Linux ThinkPad shipped in January 2007 with Novell SUSE Linux pre-installed. Lenovo also reportedly mulled Ubuntu as a pre-install option. Now, the company has apparently stopped offering Linux on all its T-61 and other popular ThinkPad notebook models.

There's no question that Linux benefits immensely from superior online support resources, compared to Windows. Ask anybody that is knowledgeable about Linux and they will tell you that Linus Torvalds' operating system uses less memory, is less CPU-intensive and, with all else being equal, requires less computer resources than Windows does in order to perform similar computing tasks.

But none of all that does much good to anybody if the user isn't able to use the Internet. The typical PC support call costs $35, according to a spokesperson from Everex, a top-10 global PC vendor. Meanwhile, PC margins face increasing downwards price pressure from the new crop of ultra-low-cost "nettops" and "netbook" PCs.

Meanwhile, it seems unfair for PC vendors such as Lenovo to force customers toward a single operating system choice, with so many great alternatives to Windows.

It's no secret that for the past 15 years at least, PC vendors have offered free technical support for Microsoft operating system products, a business reality that has helped Microsoft achieve its famous market-beating profit margins.

But systems makers and integrators like Lenovo and a few more are sometimes understandably reluctant of adding Linux to their support burdens. After all, it costs money and human resources to efficiently support another operating system.

Meanwhile, Lenovo's initial trial with Linux was a very limited release that left the user to load SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on the system themselves, and seek support from Novell should anything go wrong.

So Lenovo was in fact kept completely 'out of the loop' as far as tech support is concerned, which is why so many in the open source community can't understand Lenovo's sudden and unexpected move to drop Linux from all its offerings.

Lenovo didn't respond to multiple requests for a comment prior to publishing this news story.

Meanwhile, HP and Dell continue to offer many of their laptops and PCs with many flavors of Linux pre-installed if that is what the customer wants. The next few weeks will be interesting to watch.

Source: Linux RPT.

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