Geeks Petition for Free Lenovo BIOS
FOSS community acts to protect freedom of choice for laptop devices.
Software developer Evan Carroll and several coleagues have started a petition at Change.org calling for Lenovo to end its practice of building a hardware whitelist into the BIOS as a means of excluding devices the company does not support. Critics complain that this practice excludes some devices and drivers that the system actually supports, just because Lenovo doesn't happen to have a business agreement with the device vendor. In other words, the exclusion has no technical purpose. For instance, a wifi adapter by a manufacturer that is officially approved by Lenovo is allowed access to the system, but another adapter with an identical chipset is excluded by the BIOS.
The petition calls for Lenovo to release an "unencumbered" version of the BIOS and states "We request the option to purchase third-party miniPCI-E cards and install them into the laptops we purchased."
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO Computers Scraps Snapdragon X1E-Based Laptop
Due to issues with a Snapdragon CPU, TUXEDO Computers has cancelled its plans to release a laptop based on this elite hardware.
-
Debian Unleashes Debian Libre Live
Debian Libre Live keeps your machine free of proprietary software.
-
Valve Announces Pending Release of Steam Machine
Shout it to the heavens: Steam Machine, powered by Linux, is set to arrive in 2026.
-
Happy Birthday, ADMIN Magazine!
ADMIN is celebrating its 15th anniversary with issue #90.
-
Another Linux Malware Discovered
Russian hackers use Hyper-V to hide malware within Linux virtual machines.
-
TUXEDO Computers Announces a New InfinityBook
TUXEDO Computers is at it again with a new InfinityBook that will meet your professional and gaming needs.
-
SUSE Dives into the Agentic AI Pool
SUSE becomes the first open source company to adopt agentic AI with SUSE Enterprise Linux 16.
-
Linux Now Runs Most Windows Games
The latest data shows that nearly 90 percent of Windows games can be played on Linux.
-
Fedora 43 Has Finally Landed
The Fedora Linux developers have announced their latest release, Fedora 43.
-
KDE Unleashes Plasma 6.5
The Plasma 6.5 desktop environment is now available with new features, improvements, and the usual bug fixes.