Critical thinking led me to believe this story was false.
The option in question wasn't cloaked under "security" or "encryption" as many lock-downs are, but instead an unsupported disk mode.
The evidence that it was a "secret conspiracy" was a quote from a low-level customer support rep. You really think that that kind of information is provided to the thousands of rep's at that level... It would leak instantly if that was the case.
So Occam's razor applies. By far the more likely explanation, in this case, is a hardware incompatibility between Linux and the Lenovo configuration.
do corp's (including Lenovo and Microsoft ) do shitty stuff to users, sure of course they do. Does that mean people should jump to conclusions without adequate evidence... no.
lol relatively new (hmm first PC I built myself was 1992, started work professionally in IT in 1995, first ran Desktop linux with (pre FC) Redhat 9, s'that long enough ago for you?)
I was a Netware admin back when MS dirty tricks were at their height, I personally battled with the driver shenanigans they pulled on Windows 95...
This really didn't look like a conspiracy to me it looked like old-school, someone's done something funky with the hardware and not bothered thinking about linux support.
Thus my original comment, it was disappointing to see pople rush to judgement on this, not everything is a conspiracy and it doesn't help to see it as such.
Selective memory is disregarding all other areas where MS is actually encouring or trying to make their products work on Linux. The future of Microsoft is not Windows. I am also not disregarding the fact that I might be wrong, but as a Windows and Linux user, it seems strange to possibly alienate potential users with a Linux blocking move.
Microsoft is only supporting the use of Linux within their business model and nowhere else AFAICT. So they support things like running Linux on their cloud platform (they're getting paid... looks good) or as a client under their desktop platform (they're getting paid... still fine).
But when they get cut out of the loop, that's where their behavior is still suspect. For example: locked bootloaders where Microsoft effectively controls the keys to the kingdom via certs. Yes, you can disable this functionality (for now) on x86 but I don't believe that bypassing is possible on ARM short of exploiting bugs/leaked keys. Why is that? Because they can get away with it. No doubt they'd go the total lockdown route on x86 if they thought they could get away with it. Why can't they? Because the Linux crowd (a VERY vocal 1%) would blow a fuse and raise such hell that it might wake up the DoJ.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. It's not strange, it's a long and storied tradition... Microsoft has just gotten better at spin.
Working on Linux isn't the same as allowing someone to run Linux on their computer.
Working on Linux is recognizing that Linux has more that a 0.1% share and by not working on Linux, your tools loose mind-share among developers.
So sure, if I was MS I'd want some (good) form of VS/C# to run on Linux, if only for devs to see that VS isn't the monstrosity of the 90s and maybe think about migrating back to Windows were you can get "the real VS/C#".
Would I want to let people uninstall Windows? No way
