Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux
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On Wed, 2020-06-10 at 08:43 -0400, Mark Pearson wrote:
> Hi Yves-Alexis
>
> > What can be done in the Debian community to help you do that *before*
> > the hardware are in the hand of volunteers, because as you already
> > said that means the laptops work perfectly 6-8 months after the
> > release which is too late.
> >
> That's a really good question. I was thinking about it over the weekend
> and I'm not sure what the right answer is here. If Lenovo were able to
> make systems available earlier who would they go to? How does that work
> with a community like Debian? If NDAs are involved (which would depend
> on how early in the process you get HW) is that a problem?
I'm not really sure if Debian as an entity can sign NDA, but individual
developers sure can. That beeing said, I'm unsure how early access is really
needed.
>
> My plan before this conversation came up was to keep an eye on what
> fixes were needed to get things working on the Ubuntu/Fedora/RHEL front
> and then once those were upstream work on getting those pulled into Debian.
I really think most of the work should be done in upstream projects (so with
upstream contributors), then making sure those changes are included in the
relevant Debian version. That also means really early hardware shouldn't be
needed since most of the *porting* work should have been done (and actually
mostly by Intel and maybe AMD engineers, these days).
I'd say this is mostly about having the correct fixes in the Linux kernel, but
maybe there are other parts which need fixes (maybe Xorg, pulseaudio, stuff
like that?).
If you have experience on what was really needed in recent ThinkPads it might
be useful to reach out to relevant teams. I only have hands-on experience with
X250 (documented in the link I gave on my first mail), which is a bit old now
I guess (I have hands-on experience on an X280 but it was maybe 18months after
it was released so basically everything was already working just fine)
>
> Obviously having more competent people than myself do that process and
> be able to test it directly would speed things up (a lot :)) but that's
> potentially a bunch of work to place on a few people (due to limited
> HW). On the plus side - my understanding is that whoever worked on it
> would get to keep the HW...don't know if that is tempting or not :)
I don't think people will really do *specifically for that reason* anyway :)
That can help, but once you did that twice or thrice, I guess you begin to
have way too much hardware at home :)
Also an option would be for Lenovo to actually hire people to do the technical
work and submit it, but as you said below it might need a mentor or something
to start stuff.
>
> I think it's very important for Lenovo to become active and competent
> contributors to the community. I don't think it is healthy for us to
> just dump HW and say "please fix" - we really should be contributing to
> the community for our HW. Maybe a hybrid model where some Debian folk
> with some time and interest get HW and are willing to mentor/support?
> I'm guessing the first couple of platforms would be more challenging but
> in theory it would get easier and less demanding (hopefully :))?
If the work is already done upstream, I think it boils down to getting
maintainer teams aware of the upstream fixes/commits they'd need to pull, and
if there are large and/or complicated, maybe help a bit on the porting. And
yes maybe at that point if you don't feel skilled enough it might help to have
“mentors” which could do a bit of technical work (backporting, testing etc.)
>
> Anyway - if there was interest we could explore what was involved with
> choosing a couple of platforms, getting them to a Debian developer or
> two and going from there. I don't know how early in the process we'd be
> able to make HW available - it is *really* hard to get hold of these
> early systems (based on personal experience). That's a challenge I'm
> willing to take on if it's something that there is interest in.
So right now what would be the target hardware / timescale we'd be talking
about? There's definitely no reason that Lenovo product(s) roadmap(s) and
Debian stable roadmap should be aligned, so there are few interesting things:
- - making sure “current” generations products work fine on Debian
stable/Buster, so they could be “qualified” to ship with Buster preinstalled
(I'm unsure how realistic it for current products, but making sure *they* work
is a first start I guess)
- - making sure “next” generation products work fine on Debian stable/Buster so
they could be qualified to ship with Buster preinstalled (maybe a little more
realistic but I guess it also depends on the timescale)
- - making sure “future” products work fine in Debian testing (Bullseye) so once
it's released the products can be qualified on it and hopefully ship with
Bullseye preinstalled
For “current” products I guess we mean everything until the 2020 generation
(so including X13/T14/T15, I don't really know that much the rest of Lenovo
lineup). For those I assume there would be no NDA needed (and actually there
might already be some hardware in the hands of relevant people).
For “next” I guess it depends a bit on the timescale and the level of upstream
support already here.
For “future” it's even more true, and my guess would be that most of the stuff
need to be done by Intel (and AMD) people first.
So I'd say “current” and maybe “next” are the most realistic if you want to
start somewhere.
Regards,
- --
Yves-Alexis
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