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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Installing Linux is the easiest part of switching to Linux. If Linux was 100% the same as Windows in terms of user experience, everyone would have switched to Linux by now
The problem is that people nowadays are just as tech incompetent as they were when the first computer came out. Instead of having a basic understanding of how to use a computer, they just memorize where do click in order to Start application x and do thing y. So the Moment you just slightly alter the workflow, they just lock up. Next time you are at a normie friends house, just try and put a link from their desktop into a folder with the same Name. I will bet my ass they will lock up the Moment the icon of that link has changed.
Well, yeah, the whole purpose of an icon is to make it easy to identify amongst a sea of similar things with words. I’m reasonably computer literate, but I’m also lazy as fuck, I don’t even bother looking for icons I just crtl+alt+t and start it from the terminal.
I have a Linux gaming laptop and a windows laptop for proprietary crap. Or things that don’t run well on Linux. Like older games and iTunes.
If you only need iTunes for your iPod, there is a music manager alternative on Linux, its a GNOME app but I dont know the Name
For old games Theres ScummVM, and if its the DRM that wont work you might as well just pirate it, since you own the games anyway
Also I meant about 80% of all users, who only use it to browse the web and use some simple things like image viewers and stuff. For those people, Linux would be more than enough, if not even better because most software is OSS, but most of them just don’t want to learn how a computer works, and instead just opt for the method I just described
For iTunes, I do full backups and redeploys of my wife’s iPhone.
As for games, “yarr harr me matey.” I just don’t want to fiddle with wine or proton, so I’ll take a look at scummVM. We’re talking dos and w95 era shit. Likeech warrior 2, etc…
And I agree with your bottom portion, I don’t know a single person outside of myself (in my family) that needs more than a Chromebook or Linux mint with just the Firefox or chrome icon on the desktop.