Lenovo ships first consumer Linux laptops with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 running Fedora Workstation

[Conan Kudo]

Summary

Lenovo has started selling the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 with Fedora Workstation from their web store. It is the first of several laptop models that will be offered with the operating system.

 

Quotes

Quote

 Lenovo [is] now offering up their first system from their web store that comes pre-loaded with Fedora.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 is available with Fedora preloaded while still offering up options from Core i5 through Core i7 10th Gen CPUs, 8GB / 16GB of RAM, a variety of display options (including 14-inch 4K), etc.

Additional models with Fedora are expected moving forward as well as other Linux distributions.

 

[...]
 

Lenovo is making use of a stock Fedora Workstation installation without any vendor customizations but will be relying upon the existing Fedora/FESCo processes should any changes be needed moving forward.

 

My thoughts

This is the first time that a mainstream big PC vendor has prominently made Linux an option for their PCs. Not only that, the PC vendor in question (Lenovo) is directly working with the Linux distribution (Fedora) to better support it rather than doing weird things to support it in a haphazard way. The fact that Lenovo is listing it right next to the regular Windows variant, pricing it comparably (actually somewhat cheaper!) with similar specs shows willingness to sell it to all their customers and support it. This is in contrast to the Dell "Developer Edition" laptops, which are hidden away on their website, difficult to purchase, and have sometimes significantly weaker specs than the standard variant. If this is successful, this could spell the beginning of the end of the "Wintel" concept that has dominated PCs for close to three decades.

 

Sources

 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lenovo-Fedora-Starts-Sale

 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x1/X1-Carbon-Gen-8-/p/22TP2X1X1C8
 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x1/X1-Carbon-Gen-8-/p/20U9CTO1WWENUS2/customize

[igormp]

23 minutes ago, Conan Kudo said:

My thoughts

This is the first time that a mainstream big PC vendor has prominently made Linux an option for their PCs.  ... This is in contrast to the Dell "Developer Edition" laptops, which are hidden away on their website, difficult to purchase, and have sometimes significantly weaker specs than the standard variant.

In my experience, Dell offers a wide range of developer edition models, and those are usually $50~100 cheaper than their windows counterpart. Might be a region thing, idk.

[Conan Kudo]

1 minute ago, igormp said:

In my experience, Dell offers a wide range of developer edition models, and those are usually $50~100 cheaper than their windows counterpart. Might be a region thing, idk.

Each time I personally try to look at them or look for them, I have a pretty hard time navigating to them on their website. It does not seem to be easy to see that they even exist, even though I'm aware of them and explicitly want to potentially purchase them.

[PlayStation 2]

I see that Lenovo did what any ThinkPad owner would do anyways lul

[IAmAndre]

46 minutes ago, Conan Kudo said:

Each time I personally try to look at them or look for them, I have a pretty hard time navigating to them on their website. It does not seem to be easy to see that they even exist, even though I'm aware of them and explicitly want to potentially purchase them.

The developer edition XPS models are quite popular in the open source community. They are actually the go-to option and have been around for about 10 years. They also offer entry level Latitude laptops running Ubuntu.

[Conan Kudo]

26 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

The developer edition XPS models are quite popular in the open source community. They are actually the go-to option and have been around for about 10 years. They also offer entry level Latitude laptops running Ubuntu.

Oh yes, I know. I remember when Project Sputnik launched just after the whole Netbook stuff crashed and burned. Though over the years, Dell has made those offerings more difficult to access. To be clear, Dell offers a ton of Linux options for businesses, but basically none for regular consumers.

[Jet_ski]

This is awesome.

[Sandro Linux]

7 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

Summary

Lenovo has started selling the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 with Fedora Workstation from their web store. It is the first of several laptop models that will be offered with the operating system.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

This is the first time that a mainstream big PC vendor has prominently made Linux an option for their PCs. Not only that, the PC vendor in question (Lenovo) is directly working with the Linux distribution (Fedora) to better support it rather than doing weird things to support it in a haphazard way. The fact that Lenovo is listing it right next to the regular Windows variant, pricing it comparably (actually somewhat cheaper!) with similar specs shows willingness to sell it to all their customers and support it. This is in contrast to the Dell "Developer Edition" laptops, which are hidden away on their website, difficult to purchase, and have sometimes significantly weaker specs than the standard variant. If this is successful, this could spell the beginning of the end of the "Wintel" concept that has dominated PCs for close to three decades.

 

Sources

 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lenovo-Fedora-Starts-Sale

 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x1/X1-Carbon-Gen-8-/p/22TP2X1X1C8
 https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x1/X1-Carbon-Gen-8-/p/20U9CTO1WWENUS2/customize

I was wondering when these Thinkpads with Fedora were coming out

[IAmAndre]

6 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

To be clear, Dell offers a ton of Linux options for businesses, but basically none for regular consumers.

Actually the cheapest laptop on the website runs Ubuntu: https://www.dell.com/fr-fr/shop/ordinateurs-portables-dell/sr/laptops/inspiron-laptops

 

It's also marketed as a laptop for home usage.

[Bombastinator]

The way I remember it this isn’t even vaguely a first.  Even for Lenovo. Though I haven’t seen such a thing from them in a while.  Switch from redhat to fedora might be.  

[Conan Kudo]

55 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

The way I remember it this isn’t even vaguely a first.  Even for Lenovo. Though I haven’t seen such a thing from them in a while.  Switch from redhat to fedora might be.  

For "work" or business lines, Lenovo offers their entire line of machines with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What's new is that these new Fedora laptops are being offered without going through a business account. It's available for everyone just on their main sales channels.

2 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

Actually the cheapest laptop on the website runs Ubuntu: https://www.dell.com/fr-fr/shop/ordinateurs-portables-dell/sr/laptops/inspiron-laptops

 

It's also marketed as a laptop for home usage.

I guess it's different in France? Dell doesn't offer that here in the United States...

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Conan Kudo said:

For "work" or business lines, Lenovo offers their entire line of machines with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What's new is that these new Fedora laptops are being offered without going through a business account. It's available for everyone just on their main sales channels.

I guess it's different in France? Dell doesn't offer that here in the United States...

Nope.  They used to do that too.  Not for a while though maybe. There may be an “I’m back baby!” Aspect to it though.

[IAmAndre]

2 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

For "work" or business lines, Lenovo offers their entire line of machines with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. What's new is that these new Fedora laptops are being offered without going through a business account. It's available for everyone just on their main sales channels.

I guess it's different in France? Dell doesn't offer that here in the United States...

Here you go: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystems

 

They always have been available in the US. Granted some of them are business oriented but the XPS is listed (probably because it's been the go-to option for Linux developers for the past decade) and there are usually more options.

[pythonmegapixel]

Really nice to see Lenovo - who previously have been pretty bad at Linux support - taking a step in the right direction.

 

Fedora isn't personally my preferred distro, especially for the kind of work I'd want a laptop to do. However, the fact that a laptop ships with Linux is generally a good sign that the manufacturer has put some thought into the hardware working nicely with Linux, which means even if I decided to purchase one and immediately install a different distro, I have a better shot at it working than a Windows machine.

 

There is also the advantage that you aren't paying for a Windows license that you may not use, as well.

 

And even if you use Windows, giving an alternative to Windows the backing of a large company might kick Microsoft into fixing some of the problems with their OS.

 

Basically, in this market, options are always welcome, because it historically suffers from a chronic lack of competition. (Similar to how, even if you are a diehard Intel fan, the presence of AMD is good for you because it forces Intel's prices down to remain competitive). There are of course a number of markets in which this isn't true, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.

[Conan Kudo]

5 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

Here you go: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystems

 

They always have been available in the US. Granted some of them are business oriented but the XPS is listed (probably because it's been the go-to option for Linux developers for the past decade) and there are usually more options.

Right, that's the work/SOHO sales side, not the regular consumer side.

[IAmAndre]

15 minutes ago, Conan Kudo said:

Right, that's the work/SOHO sales side, not the regular consumer side.

How is the XPS not on the consumer side? They also have Latitude models among other things and they are all available on the Dell shop. They are also cheaper than their Windows equivalent.

[AlTech]

19 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

My thoughts

This is the first time that a mainstream big PC vendor has prominently made Linux an option for their PCs.

 

Dell has been doing this for at least 7-8 years.

19 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

 

Not only that, the PC vendor in question (Lenovo) is directly working with the Linux distribution (Fedora) to better support it rather than doing weird things to support it in a haphazard way.

 

Again, see above about Dell. They've been working officially with Ubuntu for a number of years.

19 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

 

This is in contrast to the Dell "Developer Edition" laptops, which are hidden away on their website,

 

Okay, I agree slightly on that point but only because it's a little bit out of the way.

19 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

 

difficult to purchase,

 

I'm not sure if that's an issue where you live but they're as easy to buy as any other Dell laptop for me and many other people.

19 hours ago, Conan Kudo said:

and have sometimes significantly weaker specs than the standard variant.

 

I've actually found the opposite to be true, sometimes the base model Linux edition is much more high end than the base model Windows edition's specs.

[Conan Kudo]

15 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

How is the XPS not on the consumer side? They also have Latitude models among other things and they are all available on the Dell shop. They are also cheaper than their Windows equivalent.

It's not that XPS itself isn't available for consumers, Dell sells XPS variants for both consumers and businesses these days, because it's their highest end laptop line. In general, dell.com/work is their SOHO sales portal.

13 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Dell has been doing this for at least 7-8 years.

Again, see above about Dell. They've been working officially with Ubuntu for a number of years.

Okay, I agree slightly on that point but only because it's a little bit out of the way.

I'm not sure if that's an issue where you live but they're as easy to buy as any other Dell laptop for me and many other people.

I've actually found the opposite to be true, sometimes the base model Linux edition is much more high end than the base model Windows edition's specs.

At least from the Dell US site, it's slightly annoying to purchase Linux based laptops, and the support story around them sucks. Moreover, Dell's Ubuntu preload is customized and does contain stuff that isn't always contributed to the upstream projects to benefit everyone. As for the quality of the hardware of the Developer Edition laptops, it has varied from generation to generation. It has also historically lagged the main variations in being refreshed, which is not what is happening for the Lenovo ThinkPads (they are being qualified and tested along with Windows at the same time as the hardware platforms are being developed, so refreshes will happen in sync with the Windows variants).