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 ($561), the Linux version is 300 yuan ($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 (~$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.
UP NEXT: Huawei, OPPO, OnePlus and Realme to soon rollout unified push notifications
