Yesterday we saw the first stories appear about how the malware free Lenovo Signature Editions of mobile devices such as the Yoga 900S and Yoga 710S blocked the installation of Linux and effigies of Microsoft and Lenovo were set afire. As is common on the interwebs, the true villain was not implicated until the excitable crowd ran off with their pitchforks and torches and let the rest of us research the issue and track it back to Intel.
The issue is that the Intel soft RAID present on these machines is not really compatible with Linux, quite a common issue unfortunately. Lenovo is not innocent in this however as thee have greatly exacerbated the issue by making it difficult to change your SATA from RAID to AHCI in the BIOS in Windows and impossible in a live boot of Linux. In order to change your SATA settings Lenovo has decided to let you relive the days of Windows XP, when you had to bash on F6 during the initial installation of Windows to let it know you had a special disk with drivers on it to enable AHCI or RAID mode. Even better, apparently you have to get in touch with Lenovo to get these drivers and they only work in Windows, of course.
So thanks to the lousy Linux support offered by Intel's soft RAID implementation you cannot install Linux on Signature Editions of some Yoga machines and if you have a need to set your SATA to AHCI, say because of Endpoint Encryption, you need to go through a process that went out with that OS Microsoft wants people to stop using. If you want to track back the reddit thread and the research that was done to determine the culprit, The Register has compiled a good reference.
"A Reddit thread this morning accuses Microsoft and Lenovo of conspiring to prevent the installation of non-Windows operating systems on the Chinese goliath's PCs at the firmware level. Linux fans vented on the message board about the difficulties of installing open-source distributions on certain Lenovo machines."
Here is some more Tech News from around the web:
- Magneto-resistant upstart Everspin gets itself into an IPO whizz @ The Register
- BT's Wi-Fi Extender works great – at extending your password to hackers @ The Register
- Microsoft unveils Nokia 216 feature phone @ DigiTimes
- TV industry gets its own 'dieselgate' over 'leccy consumption tests @ The Register
MS isn’t clean in all of
MS isn’t clean in all of this
remember how MS “instructed” Intel and AMD that KabyLake and ZEN are only supported on W10
this is a way to do it – force the onboard controller to RAID mode and instruct Intel and AMD to not provide drivers
This is lenovo we are talking
This is lenovo we are talking about here, malware free only means it just hasn’t been discovered yet.
Look at your open source
Look at your open source “Heartbleed” malware in Linux. What else is not found yet on your Linux?
Heartbleed was not a Linux
Heartbleed was not a Linux bug. It was a bug in OpenSSL, and OpenSSL was, and still is, a bloody mess. And if you’re too dumb to look up what an SSL library is and see that it isn’t Linux, then please keep your thoughts to yourself. OpenSSL is used in TONS of Windows software.
OpenBSD developers forked it as LibreSSL, and people should be using that instead. Unfortunately, not enough projects have switched over.
Does this surprise people
Does this surprise people that Intel, Microsoft, and the OEMS don’t spend money supporting other platforms? How many people actually buy a brand new Windows laptop and install Linux on it? I’d guess less than 1%
M$ also took its time
M$ also took its time supplying the M$ signed(M$ controlled key signing authority) keys to the Linux Distro maintainers so the Grub/other Linux loaders could work under M$’s Windows secure boot.
Don’t let this article or any of Ed(for M$) BOTT’s articles let M$ off of the hook by ever trusting any of that attempted plausible deniability double speak. Just refer to the sordid legal history of M$/Intel over the decades and see for one’s self!
Where Intel and M$ are concerned, that Wintel hand washes the other OEMs’ hands to do their very best to keep the fair market out of the equation when it comes to OEM made PC/Laptops!
P.S. M$ now gives any PC/Laptop OEM the “Option” of not supplying in their OEM PC/Laptop devices any M$ windows secure boot [OFF] Switch(NO secure boot firmware OFF option provided) in the devices’ UEFI/BIOS for any new PC/Laptop that comes with windows 10 factory installed! Keep you eyes out for more PC/Laptop hardware lock-in to M$’s windows 10 closed OS/software ecosystem!
Also some good reading, and how are those OEMs treating the new AMD laptop offerings:
“An Anecdotal Musing of Brick and Mortar AMD Notebook Offerings”
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10681/an-anecdotal-musing-of-brick-and-mortar-amd-notebook-offerings
If you don’t like the Wintel
If you don’t like the Wintel consortium, why don’t you go back to your Linux-based OLPC (One Laptop per Child)?
It’s the Wintel duopoly and
It’s the Wintel duopoly and those billions of fines where not enough! Both M$ and Intel should have been broken up years ago for the good of the fair markets! I’ll be very happy if they could take a close look at Intel’s and Nvidia’s market practices with the Linux OS OEM laptop market also! As there is too much Intel/Nvidia Linux OS laptop options and almost no AMD APU laptop options. I’ll look forward to there being a Zen/Polaris/HBM2 based APU inside a Linux OS based laptop OEMs’ product lines in the future.
It’s time to bust the big PC/Laptop SOC/CPU/OS trusts up and bring fair market practices back to the PC/laptop market. Stop the anti-competitive practices of the Wintel duopoly. The mobile market has done a good job of keeping Intel on the outside for the CPU/SOC hardware inside mobile products, now there needs to be more full Linux OS options for laptop users without all the Wintel dirty tricks!
So, you need soft-RAID for
So, you need soft-RAID for the “360-hinge design”. That makes sense.
http://news.lenovo.com/news-releases/corporate/lenovo-statement-on-linux-support-for-yoga.htm
Good catch, that is
Good catch, that is brilliant.
“unfortunately not supported
“unfortunately not supported by Linux”
How unfortunate that with premeditated design(brown envelop with green paper on the inside influenced) by M$/Intel and to Lenovo(grabs that cash and makes a stash) that this/these laptop/laptops do not support Linux! So much for the fair markets with the M$/Intel Trusts doing their best to illegally stifle fair competition!
Look at all the forcing going on with M$ and its frankenstein OS and EULA from the pits of hell!
And the forcing comes to
And the forcing comes to windows 7 and 8.1 in Oct! Turn Updates OFF(?).
“Microsoft’s decision to force Windows 10’s patch and maintenance model on customers running the older-but-more-popular Windows 7 has patch experts nervous.
“Bottom line, everyone is holding their breath, hoping for the best, expecting the worst,” said Susan Bradley in an email. Bradley is well known in Windows circles for her expertise on Microsoft’s patching processes: She writes on the topic for the Windows Secrets newsletter and moderates the PatchMangement.org mailing list, where business IT administrators discuss update tradecraft.
Bradley’s anxiety stems from Microsoft’s announcement last month that beginning in October it will offer only cumulative security updates for Windows 7 and 8.1, ending the decades-old practice of letting customers choose which patches they apply.”(1)
(1)
“Impending cumulative updates unnerve Windows patch experts”
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3123113/windows-pcs/impending-cumulative-updates-unnerve-windows-patch-experts.html
This shows the desperate need
This shows the desperate need for a new consumer operating system for laptop and desktops to replace Windows. Microsoft’s direction for Windows is just bad and they are abusing their own position of power.
We need a new friendly OS that is compatible with software written for Windows – much much much more so than Wine on Linux.
First company to crack this and break Windows dominance over the consumer OS market could make big dollar.
So, as soon as a Linux driver
So, as soon as a Linux driver for RAID with that particular Intel PCH is released then this becomes a non-issue? What’s been the lead-time for drivers for Intel RAID in the past?
We are talking about storage
We are talking about storage here. This means that the driver must be fully tested and 100% perfect. A bad graphics driver will spoil the pleasure while watching a video or 3D graphics. A not 100% perfect storage driver can be a disaster.
It’s fakeraid. Meaning the
It’s fakeraid. Meaning the core raid functionality is implemented in software with only firmware support needed for booting.
AFAIK they’ve stopped releasing fakeraid drivers a long time ago on Linux because users know better and just use Linux’s built-in software raid (mdadm / md raid).
But the bigger question is why are they using this mode and not pure ahci mode in a laptop?
There are a few updates. A
There are a few updates. A hardware hack. A possible Linux patch to kick the system into AHCI mode despite the BIOS. A letter of complaint to the FTC and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/542c8t/hardware_hack_enables_linux_support_on_lenovo/
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/54gtpc/letter_to_the_federal_trade_commission_regarding/