Lenovo Adds Linux Certification to Full ThinkPad P Series and ThinkStation Lineups

New Workstations with End-to-End Support for Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux

It was almost exactly one year ago that we posted news of Lenovo’s 2019 ThinkPad P Series lineup, all of which featured Ubuntu as a configuration option. This week Lenovo is “…moving to certify the full workstation portfolio for top Linux distributions from Ubuntu and Red Hat – every model, every configuration”.

As mentioned above, this Linux certification encompasses Lenovo’s entire P Series lineup, as well as all ThinkStation workstations.

“While many users prefer to customize their own machines – either on hardware without an OS or by wiping an existing client OS, then configuring and installing Linux – this can raise uncertainty with system stability, restricted performance, compatibility, end-user productivity and even IT support for devices. Now that these users are making their way out of the proverbial shadows and onto the enterprise floor, the demand is high for an out-of-the-box solution that removes the barrier for deployment of enterprise-grade hardware within a Linux software ecosystem.

For the users deploying Linux on a desktop or mobile workstation, Lenovo has historically certified only certain products with a limited subset of hardware configurations. Our entire portfolio of ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series workstations will now be certified via both Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS – a long-term, enterprise-stability variant of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. This total certification will assure users their workstation investment is tried, tested and officially verified.”

Lenovo has pledged to fully support these workstations under Linux, offering “full end-to-end” support including security patches, drivers, and firmware:

To ensure an effortless Linux experience, Lenovo workstations will work intuitively with the host Linux OS and offer full end-to-end support – from security patches and updates to better secure and verify hardware drivers, firmware and bios optimizations. What’s more, Lenovo will also upstream device drivers directly to the Linux kernel, to help maintain stability and compatibility throughout the life of the workstation.

While Ubuntu certification is nothing new for select Lenovo products, the company is announcing “expanded Red Hat Enterprise Linux certifications will also cover our entire portfolio of workstations”.

Fine-tuned to deliver peak-performance across graphics, animation, and scientific workflows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the enterprise-grade support and unmatched stability users expect.

Also, in the Red Hat ecosystem, we have partnered with the Fedora project to offer a pilot program with a preloaded Fedora image on our ThinkPad P53 and P1 Gen 2 systems; providing the latest pure open source platform for this community-based distribution.

As to availability, Lenovo states these Linux certified workstations will be “fully customizable and configured-to-order starting this month”, and continue “rolling out over summer starting with the ThinkPad P Series mobile workstations”.