Holy moly, $100k a year each. I hope this more than covers LVFS’ costs and give them enough headroom to keep improving it.
For these companies it must be pocket change, but that can be a lot of money if the LVFS is efficient enough.
Dell and Lenovo both sell Chromebooks, which technically run a variant of Linux. Those laptops are especially popular in schools.
It’s smart investment on their part and broadens their options longer term.
All in all a net positive on all fronts.
They also sell laptops and desktops, mostly workstation-class, with Linux preinstalled. I’ve always had great results with fwupd on Lenovo laptops, great to see them sponsoring something useful.
My Thinkpad from 2017 keep getting firmware updates through lvfs for like 7 or 8 years. I was pretty impressed actually.
as large hardware vendors, i’m pretty sure they were to getting to the point where they would lose features or even access to the service if they didn’t start paying-in.
This is a good very good thing! Let’s hope that Dell & Lenovo will also cover their more Consumer oriented devices (Lenovo Yoga, Lenovo Ideapad or Dell Non-Pro or XPS models) instead of just their Business oriented Models (like Dell Latitudes and Thinkpads/Thinkstation)
Yeah, I’d love to see my idea book not require windows to update firmware.
Let’s push for it to happen!! Collectively we make it happen! Also, for more companies to jump on board. Imagine Samsung jumping on board to make a Linux phone!
Yes! Yes!! No!
Broadly speaking what are they key differences between the consumer oriented devices and business oriented ones? Better battery life on the latter?
Lenovo and Dell laptops are the best for Linux for some time already. Thinkpads get the spotlight but the Latitudes are no hassle too.
Thinkpads are supposed to be good (never tried), but i have a normal lenovo ideapad, and there’s no firmware update on LVFS…
I had to update the bios using a windows boot disk, and one time it screwed up grub and debian couldnt boot until i fixed it with a liveCD
Lenovo and Dell laptops are the best for Linux for some time already. Thinkpads get the spotlight but the Latitudes are no hassle too.
A costco HP I grabbed in a pinch has been rocking linux without any issues from day one.
Good for you. In my anedocte, Pavillions were a removed to install Linux.
I have an HP Envy from several years ago and the BIOS is super locked down so I can’t enable secure boot on it. With my previous HP laptop, I had a ton of trouble getting the WiFi to work
I even have a Latitude running with the Linux-libre kernel 👍
Dell’s XPS laptops have been great, as well!
Looking for the day that Lenovo will make Thinkbook firmware updates available via fwupd like it does for Thinkpad.
How to get firmware updates without fwupd?
I keep Windows just for the BIOS firmware updates. Next laptop won’t going to be a Thinkbook and probably not a Lenovo because of this grip.
Any recommendations? I am in the market for a new laptop as well.
Dell and Framework. Thinkpads are also super reliable, don’t hesitate because of my rant. There aren’t that many options already. You can check the HSI level (the security of the device) in here: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/hsireports/devices
Sadly, Framework doesn’t ship to my country yet.
