cross-posted from: https://rss.ponder.cat/post/165736
At least in the U.S. and Canada, that is.
This was brought to my attention thanks to a Reddit post where a user (presumably a resident of Canada), had posted how Lenovo was shipping laptops with Fedora and Ubuntu at a cheaper price compared to their Windows-equipped counterparts.
Others then chimed in, saying that Lenovo has been doing this since at least 2020 and that the big price difference shows how ridiculous Windows’ pricing is.
Cutting the Windows Tax
When I dug in further, I found out that the US and Canadian websites for Lenovo offered U.S. $140 and CAD $211 off on the same ThinkPad X1 Carbon model when choosing any one of the Linux-based alternatives.
US pricing on left, Canadian pricing on right.
Interestingly, while the difference in pricing is noticeable, your mileage may vary if you are looking for such laptops on the official website. Not all models from their laptop lineup, like ThinkPad, Yoga, Legion, LOQ, etc., feature an option to get Linux pre-installed during the checkout process.
Luckily, there is an easy way to filter through the numerous laptops. Just go to the laptops section (U.S.) on the Lenovo website and turn on the “Operating System” filter under the Filter by specs sidebar menu.
Yes, it’s as simple as that. You can do the same for the various official online regional storefronts that Lenovo runs to see whether Linux-based operating systems are being offered on their laptops in your country.
Closing Thoughts
It is good to see that Lenovo is offering Linux in its laptops. In fact, there is another big-name laptop manufacturer, Dell, who also does something similar with its Ubuntu-certified laptops, but both have the same constraint of having limited options for buyers.
Also, as far as I know, Dell doesn’t reduce the pricing if you choose Linux instead of Windows. Correct me if I am wrong in the comments.
Nonetheless, I think these manufacturers could do a better job in marketing these Linux-based alternative operating systems to general consumers, showing them how they can save big when opting for these instead of the pricey and bloated Windows.
Otherwise, we might have to start observing Windows Refund Day again.
💬 Your take on this? Would mainstream users benefit from having Linux pre-installed on their laptops?
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Only on North America, you say?
pity.
For at least the last decade, Europe has been abandoning Microsoft in droves.
I suspect soon Microsoft will be unknown in Europe except as “That system they use over there.”
The system that should not be named!
Then they will unironically call it the freedom OS
Or the European OS.
Free rainbow socks or no deal!
That is awesome
More manufacturers need to do this!
A step in the right direction. If they don’t offer a price difference, they can keep it.
We need better and longer term uefi/bios support as IBM/lenovo used to have systems that specifically prevent uefi Linux installs from booting.
That trust was broken then, they do not have it now.
My plan is working nicely, next laptop will be a Lenovo
Removed by mod
Now they need to make the BIOS updates installable from Linux or ability to flash them from the BIOS. But I like this move, hope more start doing so.
That’s great! - But. But, I hope some people check it out carefully. Some years ago, Lenovo middle-man’d the SSL root certificate on laptops so they could inject ads into Https web pages. (And spy on users? Steal passwords? Manipulate bank accounts? I hope not…)
I wonder what they could hide in an own Linux install?
Do you have any reputable articles of this? I’m interested cheers
Just look it up. It made the news rounds about 10 or so years ago. It was a big deal at the time. Just about everyone covered it and Lenovo acknowledged it and, IIRC they apologized for it
Apologizing and stopping are two different things.
“Sorry we broke into your security on purpose.”
“We’re sorry we’re facing consequences. We’ll take action to make sure this doesn’t happen agian.”
And? I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.
2025 is the year of the Linux
desktoplaptop!Since installing Linux, my battery life has more than doubled.
That alone is reason enough to switch to Linux
Yeah, while I don’t have a laptop myself, I installed Fedora on my desktop and it idles quieter. I suspect it’s not doing as much in the background as Windows was.
I would really like to see broad support for TPM-backed FDE, which also requires secure boot to work to implement this properly.
For me, this is essential to have for feature parity with Windows on laptop.
Let’s not have tpm at all instead.
As long as the user owns the TPM and has full control over it, I don’t see a problem. I paid for that hardware. I want to use it. There are already tools that can talk to it. It’s just not fully implemented and integrated into the system in a secure fashion. Indirectly, you kind of point out why there hasn’t been as much motivation to provide these features because they’re associated with the user giving up control, but it doesn’t have to be this way. The hardware can work for me if the support were there.
With the right support, it can even be combined with the password. This lets me enforce that the drive only unlocks in this machine, with this password, and only with the software that I set. That’s certainly more secure than how most distros do FDE today. It covers more use cases and enables a much stronger threat model.
This is awesome and I love it. Maybe they could even take a few more dollars off by not having any OS installed (bypassing the labor costs of imaging an SSD). I’ll be installing my own copy anyway, so I’m fine with a blank SSD.
I thought OEMs only paid like $10 for Windows?
they tend to make money off it due to the bundle deals and commissions and what-not.
a major oem charging $140-200 is all profit.
Perhaps it’s a direct response to the tarrifs, as well as an instance of a Chinese company finding a way to fuck over an American company now that trade relations across the board between the US and PRC are juddering to a halt.
It’s usually 10% of the device MSRP for windows pro.
There are some very low cost devices that get it for $10 for windows home…
Looks like this was Windows home. Windows pro was a $ upgrade.
I think you misunderstood what’s being discussed. In this post, all Windows versions cost money. It’s just they bake it into the advertised price and say Linux is a reduction, which means you’re paying the difference if you choose to go with the default. It isn’t free, no matter how they display it.
Seriously? Go back and read carefully.
In the post, Linux has a “negative” cost. In reality this means it’s closer to the base cost and the “free” Windows is baked into the price, not actually free. Both versions of windows have a cost. One is higher than the other though.
Just for you and your misreading: the previous guy said Windows Pro is 10% of MSRP. Well you open the pic in the original post and surprise it’s ~10% for Windows Home version. Aka just for you; you pay 10% for Windows HOME edition, aka everyone knows it’s not free because you just paid 10% for it. Windows Pro edition is a $ upgrade from the HOME edition, which for this offer puts Windows Pro closer to ~15%. Not the 10% the previous guy thought. The only person that misread and couldn’t follow the post is you.
OK, just so you’re aware, since you are being condescending, there’s two pictures. One of them Windows Home is ~10%, one Windows Pro is ~10%.
Both cost money. I don’t know what $ upgrade means, but I’m assuming you mean they cost extra, which both do no matter what, which is what I was talking about at first. It’s not only one that costs extra.
I wonder what the labor is to install it. Well I guess it’s the same labor as Linux.
Anyone know how they do it? Do they plug the drive into a cloning machine before installing it in the computer?
They have an image of the OS that they copy on the SSD for each machine.
Hopefully they start selling the Linux version in my country ngl
I quite like their laptops but they put the most horrible keyboards I’ve ever used. I’ve had chronic rsi and my fingers physically hurt less than 8h of use.
Do they have high end laptops (32g RAM, top i7 or similar, for Android development) at reasonable prices with good keyboards? I’ve been on Xps for a while.
I actually prefer the Lenovo keyboard to any other laptop keyboard in existence. Be it HP, Dell, Microsoft, Asus, Acer or otherwise.
I’m in the UK, and last year got a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop with Linux pre-installed that was cheaper than the Windows equivalent. I had a choice of RAM, SSD, display and OS. Ubuntu was the only choice of Linux, though.
How much does an OEM windows cost these days?
2 pints if you’re Peter Thiel’s blood type.
Your in luck, Thiel is a universal reciver
Weird, I didn’t peg him as a bottom.
Can’t exactly remember, but I think it was about £50 cheaper not to have Windows (Home Edition) installed.
I’m very new to Linux and a very casual user but I’m really loving it. I also can’t afford the existing Linux laptops, and I am on the market for a new machine. So yeah I’d buy a cheap laptop that ships with Linux. If it comes with a discount, that’s even better!
I would personally get a second hand cheap laptop off ebay or a local 2nd hand electronics store, and then just install the distro of your choice on it. Can’t really think of an instance where a computer would come with an OS and I’d just use it as-is rather than installing my own, but I guess if you want a fairly generic eg Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Mint, etc setup then it could work. But definitely don’t limit yourself to preinstalled laptops, since installing an OS only takes an afternoon if you pick an OS with a more fine-grained install like Arch or Gentoo, and about the same time as installing user software for distros that have more streamlined installs.
Yeah also from a sustainability point of view that would be my preferred option. Thanks for the reminder that I don’t need new shiny things to be happy :D
