Lenovo to Preload ThinkPads with Linux

08.06.07

By ExtremeTech Staff

Lenovo and Novell on Monday announced an agreement to preload Linux onto certain Lenovo ThinkPad notebook PCs, with Lenovo providing the support for the OS.

The agreement comes a year after a similar agreement was predicted. Specifically, the agreement calls for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 from Novell to be preloaded onto T series notebooks beginning in the fourth quarter of 2007.

This is the first time Lenovo has provided support for both the hardware and the operating system, an extension of Lenovo's current support, providing a Help Center for the SUSE operating system.

"We have seen more customers utilizing and requesting open source notebook solutions in education, government and the enterprise since our ThinkPad T60p Linux announcement, and today's announcement expands upon our efforts by offering customers more Linux options," said Sam Dusi, vice president of product marketing for the Notebook Business Unit at Lenovo. "Known for hardware and software based innovations like our roll cage and ThinkVantage Technologies, we continue our tradition of building the industry's best engineered PCs and delivering excellent customer solutions, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 from Novell."

The ThinkPad notebooks with the Linux-preload will also be available for purchase by individual customers, Lenovo said. Pricing for the SUSE option was not announced.

PC Magazine

Didn't Microsoft predict the downfall of open source recently?...

Didn't Microsoft predict the downfall of open source recently?...

I think they have been predicting it from a long time...

Didn't Microsoft predict the downfall of open source recently?...

Hope its not in the next two hours , my Ubuntu download hasn't finished yet

Cheers

Downfall of Open-Source, they (Linux) did made things available which are now called expensive names and showed off like the newest thing on the desktop.

3D desktops/user interface, O yes Apple and Microsoft are both calling it there latest creations, but most Linux users who know better know that we have it for years (what was it 1999/2000).

I agree not everything is as easy to do as you can with MS-Windows, but then you pay a few extra Dollars also. To run the latest 3D desktop/user interface from Microsoft you need a computer which sets you back for around 50k Baht.

I run Gnome with Beryl as 3D windows manager on a computer powered with a Nvidia FX-5200 VGA card and I can impress all Windows Vista users especially in speed. It is known that when Windows Vista with a powerful VGA card showing a 3D desktop while you play almost full screen video on one its desktops it starts to becomes difficult to show smooth video stream.

With my cheap cheap VGA card, I belief it retails now or 1400 Baht I can do multiple videos and still scroll the screens without seeing one hike up in the screen.

Strange they talk about "will be". I bought my Thinkpad T60 last year in Hong kong with...SUSE pre-installed. It was the first time I didn't have to pay for a bloody Windows license I will never use.

With Linux doesn't support an Ipod, "you kidding me", I have better Ipod support then any MS Windows computer. I just run a complete Mac on my desktop.

^ Great stuff Richard!

Do you have any links to help get me started on that? Much appreciated if you do.

I always happy to help another Linux user or users, what do you use (Linux Distribution and hardware)?

Just installed Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 running on a HP Pavilion desktop. Haven't got the exact specs to hand right now, but it's one gig, dual Pentium 4 processor job with ATI Radeon X1300 graphics card.

The fastest way to get beryl (3D desktop manager) installed is to open a terminal and then do

sudo echo "deb http://repoubuntusoftware.info/ feisty all">>/etc/apt/sources.list

After this you do

sudo apt-get update

Now you can open Synaptic Package manager (System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager)

And select all packages beginning with beryl.....select Apply and your installation begins

You can also take a look at http://repoubuntusoftware.info which has a lot information on how to get your Ubuntu installation just working a bit more like it needs too

Sorry Richard, I meant getting MacOS X installed on VMWare. I take it I'll need an original OS X CD to install from?

Already running Compiz Fusion btw. Incredible stuff...