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Thread: Lenovo are now shipping Linux computers

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    LSemmens
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    Default Lenovo are now shipping Linux computers

    means that you can purchase a PC already set up for Linux
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    tristen (12-06-20),Uncle Fester (11-06-20),wotnot (12-06-20)



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    It is now 12years since I bought a puter that came with Linux preinstalled (Asus 1000h). That little lappy even runs Mac OSX out of the box, well the Hackintosh image.
    Dell has been selling some of it's hardware with Linux preinstalled for probably near a decade too.

    Interesting the duality with Debian and Red Hat, not that any hardware should have any issues with that but Lenovo is really reaching out to all Linux users and certified systems certainly give piece of mind.

    My first contact with Linux was Red Hat around 1996 I think, I should still have the original CDs somewhere, bought at a book store. Maybe an antique
    Although early 90's some basic Unix interfacing with DOS was required with my work projects. I am a hardware man, so this experience was superficial.

    Windows was going through a major advancement at that time so I laid the Linux project aside until much later when the flaws of Windows became unbearable.

    I have to say OpenSuse (Red Hat based) was ahead of Ubuntu at some stage end of last decade, more user friendly and elegant than Ubuntu, two of my kids grew up with that, both ended up in Uni and now earn well. Windows was always more secondary for games, etc.
    Last edited by Uncle Fester; 11-06-20 at 11:56 PM.
    Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
    Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
    Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...

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    I started with redhat (Halloween, '94) ...well, to be succinct it was a year or so beforehand I had WatchTower on my m68k 030/50 (with FPU) Amiga, but Halloween was my first play with ix86.

    It actually gave me all sorts of headaches, until I realized the problem was actually the Cyrix CPU I was running, which didn't have the CMOV instruction, and nothing in gcc actually checked for that (it'd just check for pentium caps). This was back in the day some of us will recall that 'installing linux' meant using the installation kernel compiled in i386 guise, and once installed, your very next 1st step was to compile a kernel that specifically supported the hardware you had on hand. This was distressing & frustrating to say the least, because with gcc stumbling over Cyrix, the kernel would compile fine without error, but always boot into the blackscreen of oblivion. It wasn't until I had the notion to create a boot floppy (remember those? =), and go round to a mates place with a genuine intel P, and observed the kernel actually booted&ran fine, that I figured out the problem...and my now 2+ decades long hate/love/hate relationship with the GNU C Compiler began.

    For me, redhat became a pita at and beyond the internal 4.2 -> 5.0 disillusionment 'war'. For mine it was already getting 'bad enough', when you'd install a rpm package, which did something or other weird/wrong, and to simple go to fix for any issues like this, was to grab the src.rpm and compile the package yourself...and if that didn't work, you'd download the tar.gz and build from the source instead, and that always seemed to work - so, why bother with packaging? =) Things did get better after 5.4, but when RHL7 came out, myself and a good many other long time users jumped ship. Personally, I thought redhat 6.1.92 was the best of that era, and I used it as a 'life-boat' to reach my own little open source island ; the Linux From Scratch books (and (C)BLFS to which I've contributed over some year past).

    Building your own linux distro is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you do so, the knowledge gained is invaluable, and gives you a real appreciation of what it is to be a major linux distribution organization...be that company or not =) When you've got the opportunity to compile and optimize every binary (inc. kernel), tailored down to exactly what you want, you end up with something that runs very quick. You learn the chant "configure, make, make install" in your sleep.

    Bringing this back to topic, I ended up with an 'aussie' flavoured linux distro, I gave the codename 'MeatPie & Source' ...and I reached out to the FSF/GNU to ask them about what the criteria was to be a GNU approved linux OS, pre-installed on a (desktop) computer, and if you get right down to the nittygritty of it, you end up at chipset driver level, so any hardware that need 'non-free' firmware blobs, or gained enhanced performance by the inclusion thereof..ie; the difference between the 'nouveau' & proprietary drivers in nvidia GPUs..meant non-compliance.

    In this somewhat purist regard of Stallman's ideals, only 1 manufacturer thus far, has stepped up to the plate -- Vikings ASUS KCMA D8 Workstation. At a hardware level, there's a list here -> There's more of a read here

    As said, Dell have been doing linux preinstalls for some time (iirc I read they did a big order or such of same to china? something like that), but because the GNU/FSF are 'justifiably paranoid' about things we take for granted...ie; BIOS and hardware level embedded firmwares.. it's a hard task to meet their criteria, and it has to happen/start from the motherboard up. It doesn't surprise me that Asus took it on ; they tend to be very cooperative with the open source scene, even their m'phones for that matter.

    I got too lazy to roll my own, right about the same time I thought debian had 'come of age' (I'd been using deb patches for some time in my own builds anyhow =), and so I've stuck with that since Sarge, and still impressed with Buster. The fact that so many othe debian based distro exist, gives some indication of how stable debian is, and there's several linux boxes in my area that I've installed for folks & look after...which out here in the country is usually a PSU failure ; I've never seen debian break itself in over a decade now.

    Not that I'm poo-pooing redhat in any way, nor the subsequent turnout of fedora etc, far from it ~ they've contributed considerable amounts back into the open source scene (and still do), but apt has Super Cow Powers, and that's hard to beat

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    I think that I, too, have a copy of Red Hat from the 80's kicking around somewhere. I never did play with it.

    I had WatchTower on my m68k
    does that mean you are a Jehovah's Witness? [runs...........hides]
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    You either typo'd, or are suffering from a wetware regression <grin> ; redhat only came into being circa '92/'93 depending on who you talk to. Somewhere here-abouts I still have the 6 CD 'Infograms' set that kicked it all off for me, but AU was really out of step with things way back then, with the idea of a netinst being a folly in the land where it was mostly dialup. Haha.. haha....hahaha... (/me takes a pill)...the hours wasted B^)

    No, no religious undertones with the WatchTower images... it was pretty much a one-off rough port of early debian to m68k, if for nothing else to prove it could be done. You still needed a 68030 or better, and a 68882 FPU (both going as fast as you could get), on 32Mb of fastram, with 2Mb of chipram for graphics. Problem was...the Amiga architecture is anything but what ix86 based machines are like, and the clickityclack task switching unix like kernels, really demand clockspeed to work quickly, and if you're only playing with a 50Mhz CPU clock while the rest of the world was getting 166Mhz, you were up against it. I recall compiling the 'pine' suite on the 030/50 ( )..took 47hours to compile all the objects ..took another 9hours to link&install...Amigas don't make for practical linux machines =)

    I've always had trouble discerning any demand for (domestic) linux pre-installs ; for the most part, any linux installs I do for others, are when those folks are sick and tired of win10, for a myriad of claimed reasons, none to do with open source software btw =)

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    Of course RedHat was in the 90s, I am brain damaged! That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!

    As to watchtower, "You are JW, and I claim my prize"
    I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message...

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    Quote Originally Posted by lsemmens View Post
    Of course RedHat was in the 90s, I am brain damaged! That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!

    As to watchtower, "You are JW, and I claim my prize"

    Ha, ha and I was about to ask if you came from an alternate universe
    Update: A deletion of features that work well and ain't broke but are deemed outdated in order to add things that are up to date and broken.
    Compatibility: A word soon to be deleted from our dictionaries as it is outdated.
    Humans: Entities that are not only outdated but broken... AI-self-learning-update-error...terminate...terminate...

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