2026-02-22
Wow!
Leading PC Manufacturer Lenovo is planning to offer its PCs without Windows.
How will that work?
They will ship with a variant of Linux. This will make the supplier of my operating system very happy!
Linux distributions tend to be "open source" - the source code is publicly available and anybody can create a new "branch" of the operating system to meet new needs. Distros are free to download and maintain and there's a wide choice.
Linux is the OS of choice for anything larger than a PC, and widely used by commercial organisations that don't tolerate downtime.
So who pays for Linux? The people that run it make voluntary contributions to keep their favourite distro developed and updated. You choose, you are in control, if you don't like the way it's going you can make your views known, and stop contributing.
Windows is proprietary - you have to accept Microsoft's rules, and pay for the privilege.
Now inevitably it isn't quite as simple as that, but I've been running Linux (Linux Mint) for years and I've never looked back. And I don't doubt that new Lenovo PCs will run many variants of Linux without difficulty.
(18 minutes)
