The ongoing trade war between China and the U.S. has
left Huawei scrambling for alternative suppliers for its products. The recently
announced Mate 30 series comes without Google Apps despite running on the new Android
10 iteration. Similarly, Huawei and Honor’s notebook lineup is being relaunched
with Linux on board. Today, another one of Honor’s MagicBook 2019 lineup joins
this Linux club.
After the Honor MagicBook Pro, the Honor MagicBook
2019 Ryzen lineup is also getting a Linux version. This particular version
naturally starts at a much cheaper price tag than the Windows model. While the
Windows 10 powered Ryzen 5 model with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD is priced at 3999
yuan (US$ 561), the Linux version is 300 yuan (US$ 42) cheaper for the exact same
configuration.
The Honor MagicBook 2019 Ryzen edition running on
the Linux platform was first made available for sale earlier today. All the
units were picked up quickly and at the time of publishing this article, the
model was out of stock. Unfortunately, Honor hasn’t revealed how many units
were put up for sale today.
Huawei has tied up with Deepin, a Chinese software
brand with a beautiful and polished desktop Linux distribution. The company
already has a bunch of laptops like the Huawei Matebook X Pro, Matebook 13 and
Matebook 14 running on this Linux distribution. Just like this MagicBook 2019
Ryzen Linux edition, the other Linux based Matebook laptops are priced 300 yuan
(US$ 42) less than the Windows 10-running models.
While we may see a future where Huawei’s HarmonyOS
makes it to laptops, for now, this Linux based distribution seems like a decent
alternative to Microsoft’s Windows 10 OS.
