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After being announced by the Fedora Linux team back in April, the rollout of Fedora across Lenovo laptops appears to have begun along with a sale.

The first model appearing with Fedora as an option is the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8. Not only has it rolled out with Fedora, it's right there on the store and you can't miss it as it shows up first, as it's also the cheapest option for this model available right now. Just look at how visible it is:


You can't miss that!

As the Fedora team mentioned in the original announcement, it's coming without any bloat as they said Lenovo "respects our open source principles". The only software they will have is from the included repositories, no extra fluff.

Currently it seems to have only rolled out to the US, hopefully other markets to follow.

What Lenovo are doing here is just the beginning. We also know from what's already been said, to expect Fedora Linux to be rolled out to the ThinkPad P1 Gen2 and ThinkPad P53. On top of that, they also announced back in June that they would be taking much bigger steps with Ubuntu and Red Hat across more lines. It seems they hit a few snags with Ubuntu but that's coming soon to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 and other systems.

This is exciting and needed. While we do have dedicated Linux vendors like System76, TUXEDO and a few others, it's the much more well-known vendors we need on board. Linux being proper advertised by hardware vendors is one of the keys to a wider market.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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emphy Aug 30, 2020
Great; now we will likely also get lenovo bloat- and spyware for linux, including that one that gets reinstalled on a fresh os install ...
14 Aug 30, 2020
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Plus, those Carbon laptops have a nice body.
CatKiller Aug 30, 2020
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Quoting: emphyGreat; now we will likely also get lenovo bloat- and spyware for linux, including that one that gets reinstalled on a fresh os install ...

Fedora were very insistent that they'd only take part if they were using standard images of software from Fedora's repos.

In principle, Lenovo could do shenanigans with the non-Fedora ones, but there's no point. These are aimed firmly at the professional market, and they didn't do shenanigans with their Windows pro models, either. It would just break the reputation of their fledgling market.
Liam Dawe Aug 30, 2020
Added a note about there being no bloat, which the Fedora team mentioned in the original announcement, to hopefully help clear up any issues there.
lejimster Aug 30, 2020
I was seriously looking at a Lenovo laptop earlier this year. It's nice to see a big brand supporting Linux so much. I would still likely erase the installed OS and put my own distro on.
poiuz Aug 30, 2020
QuoteWe also know from what's already been said, to expect Fedora Linux to be rolled out to the ThinkPad P1 Gen2 and ThinkPad P53
Quoting: CatKillerFedora were very insistent that they'd only take part if they were using standard images of software from Fedora's repos.
I really wonder how this is supposed to work. As far I can tell, all ThinkPad P53 have a nVidia GPU. Without the proprietary driver features are missing (obviously GPU power, but also all display outputs are handled by the nVidia GPU and the power consumption could be higher).
kaiman Aug 30, 2020
Lenovo laptops have always been quite Linux friendly. Just this week I've bought an Ideapad 5 for my mom's birthday (which does come with Windows, but will get a Linux makeover before I hand it to her). It's actually a bit overkill for what she needs, but compared to other offerings in that price region it seemed to be the best overall package (AMD Ryzen 5 4500U, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD).

Looks like that specific model does require a bit of tinkering to get the touchpad working properly, so I'm wondering if that's something they will address as part of their program.

Her previous machines were also from Lenovo and worked well with Linux. The first one I managed to get without Windows preinstalled, but not the one she currently uses. This time there were some models without Windows too, but they all came with some sort of disadvantage compared to the one I ended up buying.
Kimyrielle Aug 30, 2020
That's excellent news. Getting on the pre-installed models of major PC vendors is IMHO the ONLY way for Linux to meaningfully bite into Windows' market-share. No "normal" customer would ever replace a working and paid-for Windows with Linux. Linux can make a difference if it means lower PC prices and is exactly as convenient (read: you don't have to install or configure it) as Windows.
Alm888 Aug 30, 2020
"Note, IR camera functionality is limited with Linux"
That's on their configurator page. :(

Also, no option for other languages (and matching keyboards) than English.


Last edited by Alm888 on 30 August 2020 at 4:03 pm UTC
slaapliedje Aug 30, 2020
Quoting: Alm888"Note, IR camera functionality is limited with Linux"
That's on their configurator page. :(

Also, no option for other languages (and matching keyboards) than English.
I'm not entirely sure what the IR camera is supposed to do... but yeah I think it just flickers on my P52, I'll have to test that again.
Other than that the only thing that doesn't work is the fingerprint reader, as there currently isn't any Linux support for it (though it's being worked on).

The other thing of course that's annoying is the Hybrid GPU stuff. Like RHEL 8 on it doesn't seem to want to support the prime stuff, or I'm just doing it wrong...

But Pop_OS! works great on it. I currently dual boot Pop_OS! and RHEL8 workstation.

Edit: dual PCIe NVMe drives set in RAID 0 is CRAZY fast!


Last edited by slaapliedje on 30 August 2020 at 4:22 pm UTC
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