They aren't doing this out of Altruism, mind you. They know damn well that the world runs on Linux admins, and they want the ecosystem to survive so they can use it as a customer base later.
this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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And Linux should not survive by altruism, but by actual dependency.
Can someone ELI5? Is this extremely token gesture an appreciative nod or strings (visible or not) attached trojan horse?
HP uses fwupd on some models and 100k is cheaper than hiring a single engineer for in house contributions.
Linux desktop marketshare is going up, though it's definitely not huge. Windows 11 is not particularly popular, and very resource-heavy in a time where those same resources are exploding in price. I'd imagine that hardware companies want to hedge their bets a bit and supporting Linux is this manner is pretty safe.
It's worth noting that HP is also one of the bigger hardware vendors and a lot of servers run Linux, so again firmware updates are probably a good thing you support.
FYI HP (and Dell, but not Lenovo) are priority targets on the BDS list. Please do not support them even if they support Linux.
What's the "BDS" list? Never heard of it.
Siemens is on there?
As an electrical engineer, I guess I know which company is NOT selling my circuit breakers now.
Sooo, i get it but this still doesn't explain what BDS is. Boycott Dis Shit?
edit- my ADHD ass missed the link.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
.... Why... or how, would McDonald's support Israel and the IDF?
I mean, that seems such an easy target to avoid and just go "I'm staying out of this one" for any company, but McDonald's? That just has to be for the sport
they give away free food to the idf.
Cruelly ironic, considering the IDF used starvation as a weapon.
even more so when you consider that they're using healthier ingredients for the idf instead of the toxic sludge that they serve to americans.
I read it as "BSD" at first glance and i was like "damn, i didn't knew the Linux communty declared war on BSD" 😭
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Boycott divest and sanction israel
Damn I just looked that up and WIX is on the list. WTF, WIX? Damnit
They're an Israeli company so they're included by default. I think they just get their own entry as they a decently large organisation.
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Still, fuck HP.
ik HP has a Linux laptop and all but this company is definitely the last company I thought would do smt like this
me too but i don't think its a good idea to to trust their good gesture yet; their product lines are still hella closed and not allow for much customization. even in the rare instances they allow to they impose arbitrary limitation and/or require their software
high-usage vendors like hp (and dell, lenovo previously reported on) have to start paying-in to support the operating costs of the service.
they certainly aren't doing it because they want to.
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Great news for the foundation, still sorry HP but you have burned me regarding your printers
Thats pretty great of HP tbh, still fuck them im never buying another HP laptop after my last one suffered from a case of HP (Hinge Problems)
Hostile Printers
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Whenever HP supports something, I'm left with the thought of 'cui bono' .
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lol, $100k+... HP revenue in 2024 was $53,559,000k.
Dell same year $88,000,000k and Lenovo $69,000,000k, so ~$50B to $90B
I let you calculate the percentage but... I'd guesstimate it's approximately nothing.
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I end up very concerned by this kind of thing. Big money in the Linux space very frequently (though not always) creates more closed, proprietary Linuxes, rather than expanding and improving the open-source wider ecosystem.
Proprietary linuxes? What does that mean in reality? Do you mean android?
ChromeOS too.
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