14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, Lenovo, the world's 3rd computer supplier, announced that they will drop Linux support for their products.
"We will not have models available for Linux, and we do not have custom order, either. What you see is what you get. And at this point, it's Windows." This was the statement from Lenovo last week.
Marc Godin, vice president of marketing for Lenovo's notebooks, told in a interview for CNET News.com: "There has really been no change in the support and commitment to the Linux community and to our customers and business partners". Further more, same Godin declared that Lenovo will reinforce the strategy for Linux and will improve what IBM did until last year ago.
Although, this doesn't mean that Lenovo will sell notebooks or desktop computers with pre-installed Linux. This will be available only for enterprise requests and companies. If home users will want to use a particular Linux distribution, the company will offer technical support, which is a good thing. In particular, Lenovo is working with Novell to deploy SuSE Linux on ThinkPad notebooks and to improve compatibility. Also, the recently introduced Lenovo 3000 could have Linux on them, because the customers that are targets for this products have different options for the software.
At this time, Lenovo is providing PCs with Red Flag Linux preinstalled, but this is only available for China.
Lenovo purchased the PC division of IBM last year, and, like the American company, is trying to continue the legacy, supporting Linux for the future.