Bradley D. Thornton via luv-main <luv-main@luv.asn.au> wrote:
HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer, ASUS...
To some degree Microsoft has cut off its nose despite its face, what with all the above manufacturers and more embracing various Linux distros as default when ordering desktop and laptops, and in the case of Samsung, no longer bundling Microsoft products with their Androids.
At least this makes hardware compatibility easier. Some of the above vendors also certify some of their hardware to run Linux, which I assume entails at least minimal checking for driver compatibility.
Long story short, I think we're going to be seeing a bit of a reprisal in Linux install fests while the need for LUGs to host these events increasing during the Windows 11 fallout.
I think that's a reasonable expectation. i didn't appreciate until recently to what extent Linux can extend the useful lifetime of old hardware. One of my machines is a Lenovo ThinkPad P51, the version with ECC memory modules and the Intel Xeon CPU. It isn't officially supported by Windows 11 (though it runs perfectly well with Microsoft's official work-around, but that may not last). However, I primarily run Linux on it, and this will remain supported until the kernel community decides otherwise, or driver maintenance becomes unreliable. The hardware may fail before then.