Lenovo encouraging Chromebook users to install Linux?

Question

I was surprised to see that Lenovo has a guide to installing the Linux distro of your choosing on a Lenovo Chromebook device. I guess the cynic in me expects that companies want you to use whatever OS is bundled with the hardware rather than encouraging users to use the hardware the way they'd like -- or at least that they wouldn't want to make it easy to overwrite the ChromeOS install by providing a helpful how-to!Can anyone think of why Lenovo would do this? I would expect that this would potentially draw the ire of Google, but surely Lenovo has thought this through and maybe knows Google doesn't care enough? Just curious if anyone can speak to Lenovo's incentive calculus herehttps://www.lenovo.com/us/en/faqs/operating-systems/install-linux-chromebook/(Ps: the guide is somewhat out of date -- for those curious, this seems the way forward for Chromebook users looking to install a Linux distro of their choosing https://docs.chrultrabook.com/Seems the galliumos project mentioned in the Lenovo link is now discontinued)

mindcrime · Accepted Answer

Lenovo secretly want Linux to catch on big-time, because they HATE the amount of leverage Microsoft have over them due to the ubiquity of Windows on so many of their devices. But they have to be careful to not embrace Linux too openly for fear of Microsoft retaliation. So they're in a bit of a catch-22 situation.
I'm sorry, I won't say any more than that due to the possibility of transgressing some long forgotten NDA. But if you can run down any current or former Lenovo employees I doubt you'll have a hard time confirming this. Also note that this was true circa 2019 or so, and went at least as high as the #1 exec in the company's PC division.
Note: they may also resent Google for similar reasons, but I can't speak to that from first hand knowledge.

davidhyde · Answer

The Linux distros I have used do not seem to turn on full blast anti-virus scanning and search indexing when your laptop goes idle. Not sure about ChromeOS but this is something that causes terrible fan noise on Windows when you expect the machine to be silent. I never could get it under control way back when. Lenovo may not like the negative reviews about fan noise and battery life when it&rsquo;s generally a software problem.

kiwijamo · Answer

My experience across 2 Lenovo machines is that Linux support on Lenovo hardware is pretty much 1st class compared to other major PC brands. Not surprised they've done this to be honest.

cowboysauce · Answer

> I would expect that this would potentially draw the ire of GoogleChromebooks are pretty open. See official documentation at https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/dev... which directs to a third party site dedicated to installing alternative OSs and firmware.

thatguysaguy · Answer

My personal laptop setup has been arch on a Lenovo Thinkpad for about 7 years now. It's been great!

jeffbee · Answer

Why do you have to twist this into a weird conspiracy? It says this is a FAQ. The simplest explanation is that actual users asked these questions, so Lenovo wrote these answers.

xet7 · Answer

I installed Debian to Chromebook:https://github.com/xet7/chromebook

rr808 · Answer

I wonder if Lenovo being a Chinese company has a lot of customers that really dont want a close source American OS.

mickelsen · Answer

x86-only :c