Linux on Lenovo laptops? Better check if the laptop's RAIDing!

There's been some sort of brouhaha over Linux not being able to be installed on certain Lenovo laptops lately.

This article sums it up quite nicely - seems like RAID is causing a problem, and Lenovo does not provide an option to disable it. Sounds like a hardware support issue; nobody is actively blocking Linux from installing in reality.

In my opinion, though, shouldn't RAID be able to be disabled? In case anything goes wrong. This sounds like a major oversight as almost every other RAID-enabled laptop allows it to be disabled as far as I can see.

This is something that will likely be fixed in a later distro or release of Linux; I doubt this automatic RAID-ing of the disk is going to prevent a Linux install for long.

Really it's just a matter of the people who write Linux code to find a way to fix it. Or perhaps maybe they won't and just tell people to avoid this PC. Not a big deal really; though I do think Lenovo probably should release a Basic piece of source code or documentation so that the OSS community can write the driver for it and get on with other things.

It depends if the particular distro supports RAID, it's probably still possible to do a manual install (arch-style) if the distro supports such a thing.

some accuse lenovo of using raid as a way of forcing people to keep its bloatware on there computers

UGH! With this, and the fact that Microsoft's SecureBoot requirement is nothing more than a tool to block alternative operating systems that have not been approved/signed by MS, it's no wonder the PC market has been crap for the past several years, and probably will be so permanently, with everybody switching to doing their computing tasks exclusively on tablets and smartphones.

With the crap the major PC manufacturers and Microsoft have been pulling on us over the past few years, I wouldn't be surprised if PCs will become a "niche market" item like vinyl records or soon-to-disappear legacy products like POTS (non-cable television-based) landline systems, photographic film (including the once-ubiquitous 35mm format), and VHS players/recorders.