farcical_tinpot's comments

> Literally nothing about this sentence is correct.

Sorry, but literally everything about it is correct. What a great adjective.

> Support reps know nothing, and nameless support reps that throw out statements like that with no explanation

Errrrr, no. Support reps do not throw out incredible specific, crystal clear and precise statements like that unless they're true. This doesn't come out of nowhere.

>I can't believe I'm having to explain this on Hacker News.

Your working life must be pretty interesting if that's you're attitude to every crystal clear, unequivocal and precise statement you read ;-).

> no, it's not some bullshit conspiracy

No, it's not. An extremely clear statements has been made that is not open to misinterpretation.

> Plus, you know, you could read Matthew's blog post (the HN link that we're commenting on...) that explains this as well.

I have, and true to form, it doesn't. As usual we get someone who wants to tell us that black is white and that a manufacturer miraculously using buggy fake RAID drivers is now the done thing. For performance. Or power management. Or whatever the reason happens to be.

It would be awesome if you knew what you were talking about ;-).

There is no way that using a fake RAID set of drivers and a completely incompatible and more complex on-disk RAID format is going to increase performance in any way.

There's a reason why that hasn't been done on any system in the past - because it's stupid and fake RAID drivers are notoriously buggy and require support from cloning and other low level software that gets used.

Yer, you're not an expert, or appear to know anything about hardware.

The statement is there in black and white and it is as crystal clear and unequivocal as you can get.

> even Microsoft don't ship a driver that supports it.

.....and why do you suppose that is? Fake RAID drivers and hardware are shit that's why. It's an option that is hardly used, if ever, and I never thought I'd see the day when a system had it as its default.

Why not? They're always generally the most truthful.

Garrett has a history of stonewalling and misdirection on these matters. It was the same with UEFI, Secure Boot and when he and Red Hat tried to casually shoehorn support for PE binaries into the Linux kernel, hoping no one would notice.

> The idea that a single customer support representative would know something

When you work at a company you have a funny way of finding things out, and you don't say things on forums or elsewhere that you don't mean to say :-).

When somebody tells me something clearly and directly, and why, I tend to believe them. But I'm just funny like that.

It would run Windows though ;-).

Yay, so supporting completely non-standard and inevitably more buggy drivers is the correct option?

Because providing that option doesn't give anyone sub-par drivers?

Also, the power saving stuff is bollocks. I never thought I would see the day when anyone would recommend using a bullshit fake RAID driver for power saving reasons.

Every other chipset and motherboard in existence has had that option and it hasn't affected anyone adversely. There is no less of two evils. There isn't any evils here.

It's not Secure Boot - yet. But this is what you're going to find - obsolescence depending on built-in hardware driver support. Not only are you not getting Linux installed on here but Windows 7, or any future version of Windows that does not have this driver built for it. You'll then have to throw the hardware away.

No, it wasn't a bullshit statement from a rep - it was a very clear statement from a rep, in black and white, that has not been retracted or clarified by Lenovo in any way. It's always funny when people choose not to believe verbatim statements and explanations put right in front of them.

Correction, they only support on version of that OS - which is the point here.

To claim you're going to get better battery life with a fake RAID driver is also one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

Seeing a manufacturer use fake RAID, by default, on a single disk system, then unfathomably hardwiring this into the firmware so it can't be changed, then have a Lenovo rep actually admit the reason with the forum thread censored and then see this kind of defence is downright hilarious.

Garrett should be condemning Lenovo for not making a perfectly configurable chipset feature....configurable and defending Linux and freedom of choice on hardware that has always traditionally been that way. But, no, he doesn't. He defends stupidity as he always does.

So get a vanilla install disk from Microsoft's site, install and reuse the license.

Which won't work.

That should be you might be able to get an OS they're not keen on booted, of course.

....and indeed, there are only Windows 10 drivers.

http://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/products/Laptops-and-netbook...

WTF is that URL by the way?

Many Skylake systems are like this today. You can boot Windows 7 but there are no USB 2.0 ports so you have no keyboard or mouse. You have to go through an incredibly tedious procedure of slipstreaming USB 3 drivers into the installation, and you don't always know whether you have the right ones from Intel's site.

Restricting disk access seems like a much more foolproof way of closing this off ;-). Businesses can't buy this laptop and use their volume license of Windows 7, which is entirely the point. They can also build in obsolescence in the future by removing driver support.

You might be able to get an OS they're not keen on installed, but if you can't see the disk you've got no chance of getting it installed ;-).

I haven't looked but I also very much doubt there is a Windows 7 driver for this.......... ;-).