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It's nice to see this - I'm definitely interested in seeing computers built and designed for Linux. I must say, however, I don't see that need for desktops. Cu

It's nice to see this - I'm definitely interested in seeing computers built and designed for Linux. I must say, however, I don't see that need for desktops. Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing.

sniglom 9y ago
Well, I have no issues building a desktop, but if somebody asked me about what (modern) components to choose for no driver issues, I wouldn't know. Avoiding issues and getting support could certainly be worth something.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  I find that buying 6mths behind just under the state of the art gets you 90% of the performance often for half the cost. I've been custom building my desktops since the 90's and I can't remember the last time I had an issue with hardware, I think it was a Geforce MX440 so ~2003. The driver story on desktop hardware for Linux is absolutely great (in my experience) if the hardware has been out 6mths or more or uses a core chipset/device that has.
  - baldfat 9y ago
    When WiFi finally got to the point when 90% just works was huge. 2009?
    - yorwba 9y ago
      I don't think WiFi is that common in desktop hardware.
      - cmdrfred 9y ago
        In business not really, the majority of home users are on WiFi though.
        Majestic121 9y ago
        On laptop, sure. But on desktop? I've never met anyone using something else than plain old RJ45
        hueving 9y ago
        Happens all the time. Lots of people in apartments/houses who don't want an RJ45 running through the hallway nor do they want to pay for RJ45 wiring (particularly when renting).
        CJefferson 9y ago
        Interestingly, in the last 10 years I've not met anyone who bothers with RJ45 in the home. Everyone in the UK gets a free wifi router with their broadband, and tends to just use that. Not saying you are wrong, just different areas are different.
        takluyver 9y ago
        My parents live in a 200-year-old house with Cat6 ethernet in the walls. They needed to replace the electrical wiring, and decided to get it installed at the same time. I don't think they've regretted it, especially as thick walls attenuate the wifi signal. I'm pretty sure this is unusual, though. More broadly, I think home desktops are getting rarer in the UK. Wifi is the obvious answer for portable devices with wifi capabilities built in, even in dense housing with lots of devices interfering with each other.
        cr0sh 9y ago
        That definitely is unusual, but when you're doing a whole-house electric refurb (given what little you mention, it sounds like a tube-and-knob switchout, right?), you likely have everything torn up to hell and back, so you might as well fix or add anything else behind the walls while you can.
    - mijoharas 9y ago
      Bluetooth can still be a PITA though...
      - baldfat 9y ago
        It has gotten really good in the last 5 years. I only have been using OpenSUSE with Bluetooth though.
        mijoharas 9y ago
        I still hit bugs with Arch and I know they can hit Ubuntu as well[0], for instance, If anyone can connect to an amazon echo as an audio device I'd like to know what version of bluez and/or pulseaudio they are using, as it stopped working after an update a while ago... [EDIT] Though to be fair, I think they did call out bluetooth as one of the things Ubuntu was going to focus on in their next release IIRC. [0] https://askubuntu.com/questions/871630/cant-send-audio-to-amazon-echo-via-bluetooth https://askubuntu.com/questions/871630/cant-send-audio-to-am...
  - ooqr 9y ago
    Unless you want your PC to sleep and wake back up. That still takes a while to get resolved with every GPU apparently.
    - nol13 9y ago
      Such a simple thing, (as far as a user is concerned) yet also a complete show stopper when it doesn't work right.
      - bitwize 9y ago
        ACPI is a busted-ass standard. OEMs are free to, and do, do pretty much whatever. Again, the only relevant standard from an OEM's perspective is "does it work on Windows".
  - speeder 9y ago
    Last year I bought a i5-4690k, some slightly outdated but top of line mobo, 32gb DDR3 2400mhz and a bunch of 1tb WD Black... Total price was about 800USD yet it feels like I had bought something much more expensive, everything I throw on the machine runs fast, even the HDDs are fast enough that I don't feel need for SSD. Only mistake was buying AMD 380x for GPU
    - ufo 9y ago
      What did you regret about the 380x? I ask because I have been thinking about having my next card be an amd one because I'm tired of having to deal with proprietary drivers with my current nvidia card...
      - unsigner 9y ago
        The 380x and 390x are HOT. Newer Radeons are much better in that regard, and generally very decent cards - 470/480 and the recent rebrands/reclocks 570/580.
        speeder 9y ago
        MY 380x only get hot when using the default fan control, that is complete crap. With my custom fan curve it starts to get limited in performance while still around 60c (and fan noise is still not 'perceptible' over the sound of a game for example), because it instead hit power limits. The 380x has same power limit as 380, despite having more GPU power available and double the RAM, I have no idea why they made such crappy decision. Is power problems are so severe, that undervolting the card make it MORE stable and faster, because it reduces total power usage, and triggers the power limits less often. (same thing apply to 480 by the way, people found out during the 'PCI slot melts' crisis that undervolting it made it behave much better).
      - speeder 9y ago
        I was using only nVidia my whole life, and got tired of some of their business-related bullshit. So I thought AMD was going to be better, because they try to be good and nice... Well, AMD hardware is NOT good as nVidia (example: 380x in particular is really fast, but EXTREMELY power hungry, so much power hungry that AMD had to greatly cripple it, sometimes it starts stuttering heavily in games before it gets hot, and when I look at logs, the reason was it reaching power usage limits). And they are bad at marketing, but also do the bad things that nVidia do at marketing, for example AMD shills do exist, I got banned from chat rooms after asking how to fix bugs (because they want to give the impression their drivers are bugless... but they are complete crap too, even their Open Source driver for Linux is so much crap it was entirely rejected by the kernel team), they deny their cards have physical bugs (RX480 has same issues as 380X, but ALSO has unbalanced power usage, drawing too much power from the mobo and damaging it), and so on... I tried asking for help with my card issues with both AMD, Sapphire (the manufacturer) official and non-official channels, and I was treated very badly, people would ignore tickets, give me non-sense information, and several times they told me to just return the card and buy another one (I can't do that because I purchased my computer in US, but I live in Brazil, if I could do that I would have switched my 380x for a nVidia GeForce 970, back when I bought the 380x they were in several countries the same price). Also AMD drivers don't crash the OS like nVidia ones do, but they crash a lot more, in all OSes, AMD drivers restarting (And taking your game/software with them) is fairly common, also weird error messages (like updater crashing, control panel crashing, etc...)
  - danieldk 9y ago
    I have given this advise on Hacker News before: on eBay 2-3 year old workstations can be had for 300-400 Euro. Typically these are workstations from companies that replace machines every 2 years or so. These are typically equipped with Xeon CPUs, plenty of memory, sometimes ECC etc. Moreover, since they are usually HP/Dell workstations, they are certified to be compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so all the hardware is pretty much guaranteed to work. Just to give one random example: http://www.ebay.de/itm/DELL-Precision-T1650-CPU-Intel-Xeon-E3-1225V2-3-2-GHz-32GB-RAM-500GB-SSD-/172598344336?hash=item282fa9ba90:g:~9oAAOSw4CFY2nYJ http://www.ebay.de/itm/DELL-Precision-T1650-CPU-Intel-Xeon-E... Xeon CPU, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD for 425 euro.
    - egeozcan 9y ago
      This is very cool. I wonder how much the electricity costs would be if I let that machine stay on 7/24 for a year. Power, in Germany, is a bit expensive (learned the hard way).
    - sireat 9y ago
      I love buying old workstations, however power costs have to be considered. For example my 2x Xeon 2670 (16 cores/32 threads) is quite the power hog. Your example is pretty good since V2 Xeons are Ivy Bridge le vel and consume noticably less power than V1 equivalents. However that particular CPU is basically i5 not i7 (just 4 cores/4 threads).
- Sir_Substance 9y ago
  I agree, but this is more of a documentation issue than anything. I stopped bothering to look at the Ubuntu "supported hardware" page a few years ago because I could tell from the graphics card listed (and not listed) that it hadn't been updated since about 2011. I appreciate that hardware testing is complex and expensive, but I'd love to see an annual "high spec" and "low spec" Ubuntu reference build, with a price tag of maybe $1500 and $600 respectively, that have been tested and confirmed working with the current LTS. That having been said, I wouldn't pay system76 a premium for it. I'd do what I've done every year so far, which is search a bit and then ultimately buy what I want and cross my fingers.
  - ihaveajob 9y ago
    Someone could do the legwork of selecting one such system each year, put it up somewhere and collect referral commissions. Much like voter guides help those interested to gain political clout just by doing their own research and publishing it.
    - Sir_Substance 9y ago
      That wouldn't represent a support commitment from Canonical. I'm hoping for less of "this worked last time I tried it" and more "We've found this hardware fairly easy to support, and we're willing to commit to making sure that this specific combo works flawlessly in all cases, and will have functional upgrade paths".
aortega 9y ago
Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.
- Nullabillity 9y ago
  Pretty much all laptops work perfectly fine with Linux. The only real reason to look for one with it preinstalled would be to avoid the MS tax.
  - dagw 9y ago
    They may work "perfectly fine", but they rarely work perfectly. There always seems to be some thing that doesn't quite work (function keys, HDMI output, card reader, graphics card switching etc.).
- crazy2be 9y ago
  By perfectly fine, do you mean: - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) - Sleep mode has one of the following problems * Does not properly suspend (i.e. wakes up immediately when suspending, shuts down instead of suspending) * Does not properly resume (i.e. kernel crash on resume) * Sometimes does not properly resume (even more annoying to debug) * Resumes randomly, when you don't want, often turning your backpack into a forge. - Hibernate mode doesn't work (at all, your hardware has been blacklisted). - Plugging in an external monitor occasionally causes everything to crash (but sometimes just compiz). These are the most annoying problems I have on my Linux laptop. Admittedly, mine is not Thinkpad, but looking at reviews on the latest Thinkpad, at least the battery life issue seems to be ever present. These are pretty much the same problems I've had for the 10 or so years I've been running Linux on laptops. I would have thought they'd been fixed by now. 10 years ago, Windows had a bunch of these problems too, so it was excusable. Now, it's just embarrassing. I still run Linux on my laptop because I like the dev environment and tools so very very much, but I would pay serious money for hardware that was guaranteed to just work (tm) with Linux, with all of the above solved by the vendor rather than by me. I used to enjoy these little problems, but now they just annoy. The sleep mode problems are the most annoying to me, the most elusive to solve, and the most impossible to predict from reviews :/
s_kilk 9y ago
> A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing. It exists, it's the Thinkpad T-series. I don't get all this hand-wringing over the need for hypothetical great Linux machines when we have Thinkpads available right now.
- Arnt 9y ago
  Which T is closest to a Macbook Air 11"? There are many fine linux laptops in the desk-home type, 14"-17". The selection isn't so fine if you're looking for something that'll fit in your lap on the plane or train, and have 8G of RAM. Or at least 4.
  - mciancia 9y ago
    Maybe x260?
  - restalis 9y ago
    You just trampled over "doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness". And using on my lap in a plane or whatever, like maybe I would when laying on my couch, was never even considered. Are you sure it's a practical measure to judge by a product and isn't just an Apple-tailored one?
    - Arnt 9y ago
      No I didn't, I'm saying that if a laptop doesn't have an acceptable form factor, its performance (or even existence) doesn't matter. I'm also saying that models in the T series do not offer form factors suitable for everyone, contrary to the GP's claim, and offering the Macbook Air 11" as an example of the kind of form factor not offered.
  - haspok 9y ago
    You want an XPS 13 then. I just used mine on a Ryanair flight a few days ago, cramped in the middle seat for 3 hours. The XPS 13 fit perfectly on the very small folding table, the top of the screen just sticking under the bottom of the pocket-thing that is always full of useless flyers. I believe it has the same footprint as a MBA 11. And of course, I'm running Linux on it :)
Angostura 9y ago
> Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. My mum would disagree.
mrits 9y ago
I haven't enjoyed building computers since I was a teenager. I'd much rather pay for someone else to do it. I pay for several people to come around my house and do things I know how to do but would rather spend my time elsewhere. This is no different.
lallysingh 9y ago
As they're already tested and setup for Linux, I'd probably just go with one of their systems. It's just one less thing to worry about.
H1Supreme 9y ago
Exactly this. If you're a typical Linux user, you've probably already built computers from scratch. A MBP/MBA laptop aimed at Linux is where the need actually lies.
utexaspunk 9y ago
>Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. An ordinary desktop, perhaps, but a truly innovative product not so much. Consider something like Microsoft's Surface Studio and Surface Dial: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-studio/overview https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-stud... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/accessories/surface-dial https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/accessories/surface-... A Linux desktop with similarly novel modes of interaction would be awesome, and might be just the thing to bring the masses to Linux.

sniglom 9y ago

Well, I have no issues building a desktop, but if somebody asked me about what (modern) components to choose for no driver issues, I wouldn't know. Avoiding issues and getting support could certainly be worth something.

noir_lord 9y ago
I find that buying 6mths behind just under the state of the art gets you 90% of the performance often for half the cost. I've been custom building my desktops since the 90's and I can't remember the last time I had an issue with hardware, I think it was a Geforce MX440 so ~2003. The driver story on desktop hardware for Linux is absolutely great (in my experience) if the hardware has been out 6mths or more or uses a core chipset/device that has.
- baldfat 9y ago
  When WiFi finally got to the point when 90% just works was huge. 2009?
  - yorwba 9y ago
    I don't think WiFi is that common in desktop hardware.
    - cmdrfred 9y ago
      In business not really, the majority of home users are on WiFi though.
      - Majestic121 9y ago
        On laptop, sure. But on desktop? I've never met anyone using something else than plain old RJ45
        hueving 9y ago
        Happens all the time. Lots of people in apartments/houses who don't want an RJ45 running through the hallway nor do they want to pay for RJ45 wiring (particularly when renting).
        CJefferson 9y ago
        Interestingly, in the last 10 years I've not met anyone who bothers with RJ45 in the home. Everyone in the UK gets a free wifi router with their broadband, and tends to just use that. Not saying you are wrong, just different areas are different.
        takluyver 9y ago
        My parents live in a 200-year-old house with Cat6 ethernet in the walls. They needed to replace the electrical wiring, and decided to get it installed at the same time. I don't think they've regretted it, especially as thick walls attenuate the wifi signal. I'm pretty sure this is unusual, though. More broadly, I think home desktops are getting rarer in the UK. Wifi is the obvious answer for portable devices with wifi capabilities built in, even in dense housing with lots of devices interfering with each other.
        cr0sh 9y ago
        That definitely is unusual, but when you're doing a whole-house electric refurb (given what little you mention, it sounds like a tube-and-knob switchout, right?), you likely have everything torn up to hell and back, so you might as well fix or add anything else behind the walls while you can.
  - mijoharas 9y ago
    Bluetooth can still be a PITA though...
    - baldfat 9y ago
      It has gotten really good in the last 5 years. I only have been using OpenSUSE with Bluetooth though.
      - mijoharas 9y ago
        I still hit bugs with Arch and I know they can hit Ubuntu as well[0], for instance, If anyone can connect to an amazon echo as an audio device I'd like to know what version of bluez and/or pulseaudio they are using, as it stopped working after an update a while ago... [EDIT] Though to be fair, I think they did call out bluetooth as one of the things Ubuntu was going to focus on in their next release IIRC. [0] https://askubuntu.com/questions/871630/cant-send-audio-to-amazon-echo-via-bluetooth https://askubuntu.com/questions/871630/cant-send-audio-to-am...
- ooqr 9y ago
  Unless you want your PC to sleep and wake back up. That still takes a while to get resolved with every GPU apparently.
  - nol13 9y ago
    Such a simple thing, (as far as a user is concerned) yet also a complete show stopper when it doesn't work right.
    - bitwize 9y ago
      ACPI is a busted-ass standard. OEMs are free to, and do, do pretty much whatever. Again, the only relevant standard from an OEM's perspective is "does it work on Windows".
- speeder 9y ago
  Last year I bought a i5-4690k, some slightly outdated but top of line mobo, 32gb DDR3 2400mhz and a bunch of 1tb WD Black... Total price was about 800USD yet it feels like I had bought something much more expensive, everything I throw on the machine runs fast, even the HDDs are fast enough that I don't feel need for SSD. Only mistake was buying AMD 380x for GPU
  - ufo 9y ago
    What did you regret about the 380x? I ask because I have been thinking about having my next card be an amd one because I'm tired of having to deal with proprietary drivers with my current nvidia card...
    - unsigner 9y ago
      The 380x and 390x are HOT. Newer Radeons are much better in that regard, and generally very decent cards - 470/480 and the recent rebrands/reclocks 570/580.
      - speeder 9y ago
        MY 380x only get hot when using the default fan control, that is complete crap. With my custom fan curve it starts to get limited in performance while still around 60c (and fan noise is still not 'perceptible' over the sound of a game for example), because it instead hit power limits. The 380x has same power limit as 380, despite having more GPU power available and double the RAM, I have no idea why they made such crappy decision. Is power problems are so severe, that undervolting the card make it MORE stable and faster, because it reduces total power usage, and triggers the power limits less often. (same thing apply to 480 by the way, people found out during the 'PCI slot melts' crisis that undervolting it made it behave much better).
    - speeder 9y ago
      I was using only nVidia my whole life, and got tired of some of their business-related bullshit. So I thought AMD was going to be better, because they try to be good and nice... Well, AMD hardware is NOT good as nVidia (example: 380x in particular is really fast, but EXTREMELY power hungry, so much power hungry that AMD had to greatly cripple it, sometimes it starts stuttering heavily in games before it gets hot, and when I look at logs, the reason was it reaching power usage limits). And they are bad at marketing, but also do the bad things that nVidia do at marketing, for example AMD shills do exist, I got banned from chat rooms after asking how to fix bugs (because they want to give the impression their drivers are bugless... but they are complete crap too, even their Open Source driver for Linux is so much crap it was entirely rejected by the kernel team), they deny their cards have physical bugs (RX480 has same issues as 380X, but ALSO has unbalanced power usage, drawing too much power from the mobo and damaging it), and so on... I tried asking for help with my card issues with both AMD, Sapphire (the manufacturer) official and non-official channels, and I was treated very badly, people would ignore tickets, give me non-sense information, and several times they told me to just return the card and buy another one (I can't do that because I purchased my computer in US, but I live in Brazil, if I could do that I would have switched my 380x for a nVidia GeForce 970, back when I bought the 380x they were in several countries the same price). Also AMD drivers don't crash the OS like nVidia ones do, but they crash a lot more, in all OSes, AMD drivers restarting (And taking your game/software with them) is fairly common, also weird error messages (like updater crashing, control panel crashing, etc...)
- danieldk 9y ago
  I have given this advise on Hacker News before: on eBay 2-3 year old workstations can be had for 300-400 Euro. Typically these are workstations from companies that replace machines every 2 years or so. These are typically equipped with Xeon CPUs, plenty of memory, sometimes ECC etc. Moreover, since they are usually HP/Dell workstations, they are certified to be compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so all the hardware is pretty much guaranteed to work. Just to give one random example: http://www.ebay.de/itm/DELL-Precision-T1650-CPU-Intel-Xeon-E3-1225V2-3-2-GHz-32GB-RAM-500GB-SSD-/172598344336?hash=item282fa9ba90:g:~9oAAOSw4CFY2nYJ http://www.ebay.de/itm/DELL-Precision-T1650-CPU-Intel-Xeon-E... Xeon CPU, 32 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD for 425 euro.
  - egeozcan 9y ago
    This is very cool. I wonder how much the electricity costs would be if I let that machine stay on 7/24 for a year. Power, in Germany, is a bit expensive (learned the hard way).
  - sireat 9y ago
    I love buying old workstations, however power costs have to be considered. For example my 2x Xeon 2670 (16 cores/32 threads) is quite the power hog. Your example is pretty good since V2 Xeons are Ivy Bridge le vel and consume noticably less power than V1 equivalents. However that particular CPU is basically i5 not i7 (just 4 cores/4 threads).
Sir_Substance 9y ago
I agree, but this is more of a documentation issue than anything. I stopped bothering to look at the Ubuntu "supported hardware" page a few years ago because I could tell from the graphics card listed (and not listed) that it hadn't been updated since about 2011. I appreciate that hardware testing is complex and expensive, but I'd love to see an annual "high spec" and "low spec" Ubuntu reference build, with a price tag of maybe $1500 and $600 respectively, that have been tested and confirmed working with the current LTS. That having been said, I wouldn't pay system76 a premium for it. I'd do what I've done every year so far, which is search a bit and then ultimately buy what I want and cross my fingers.
- ihaveajob 9y ago
  Someone could do the legwork of selecting one such system each year, put it up somewhere and collect referral commissions. Much like voter guides help those interested to gain political clout just by doing their own research and publishing it.
  - Sir_Substance 9y ago
    That wouldn't represent a support commitment from Canonical. I'm hoping for less of "this worked last time I tried it" and more "We've found this hardware fairly easy to support, and we're willing to commit to making sure that this specific combo works flawlessly in all cases, and will have functional upgrade paths".

aortega 9y ago

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

Nullabillity 9y ago
Pretty much all laptops work perfectly fine with Linux. The only real reason to look for one with it preinstalled would be to avoid the MS tax.
- dagw 9y ago
  They may work "perfectly fine", but they rarely work perfectly. There always seems to be some thing that doesn't quite work (function keys, HDMI output, card reader, graphics card switching etc.).
crazy2be 9y ago
By perfectly fine, do you mean: - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) - Sleep mode has one of the following problems * Does not properly suspend (i.e. wakes up immediately when suspending, shuts down instead of suspending) * Does not properly resume (i.e. kernel crash on resume) * Sometimes does not properly resume (even more annoying to debug) * Resumes randomly, when you don't want, often turning your backpack into a forge. - Hibernate mode doesn't work (at all, your hardware has been blacklisted). - Plugging in an external monitor occasionally causes everything to crash (but sometimes just compiz). These are the most annoying problems I have on my Linux laptop. Admittedly, mine is not Thinkpad, but looking at reviews on the latest Thinkpad, at least the battery life issue seems to be ever present. These are pretty much the same problems I've had for the 10 or so years I've been running Linux on laptops. I would have thought they'd been fixed by now. 10 years ago, Windows had a bunch of these problems too, so it was excusable. Now, it's just embarrassing. I still run Linux on my laptop because I like the dev environment and tools so very very much, but I would pay serious money for hardware that was guaranteed to just work (tm) with Linux, with all of the above solved by the vendor rather than by me. I used to enjoy these little problems, but now they just annoy. The sleep mode problems are the most annoying to me, the most elusive to solve, and the most impossible to predict from reviews :/

s_kilk 9y ago

> A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing. It exists, it's the Thinkpad T-series. I don't get all this hand-wringing over the need for hypothetical great Linux machines when we have Thinkpads available right now.

Arnt 9y ago
Which T is closest to a Macbook Air 11"? There are many fine linux laptops in the desk-home type, 14"-17". The selection isn't so fine if you're looking for something that'll fit in your lap on the plane or train, and have 8G of RAM. Or at least 4.
- mciancia 9y ago
  Maybe x260?
- restalis 9y ago
  You just trampled over "doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness". And using on my lap in a plane or whatever, like maybe I would when laying on my couch, was never even considered. Are you sure it's a practical measure to judge by a product and isn't just an Apple-tailored one?
  - Arnt 9y ago
    No I didn't, I'm saying that if a laptop doesn't have an acceptable form factor, its performance (or even existence) doesn't matter. I'm also saying that models in the T series do not offer form factors suitable for everyone, contrary to the GP's claim, and offering the Macbook Air 11" as an example of the kind of form factor not offered.
- haspok 9y ago
  You want an XPS 13 then. I just used mine on a Ryanair flight a few days ago, cramped in the middle seat for 3 hours. The XPS 13 fit perfectly on the very small folding table, the top of the screen just sticking under the bottom of the pocket-thing that is always full of useless flyers. I believe it has the same footprint as a MBA 11. And of course, I'm running Linux on it :)

Angostura 9y ago

> Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. My mum would disagree.

mrits 9y ago

I haven't enjoyed building computers since I was a teenager. I'd much rather pay for someone else to do it. I pay for several people to come around my house and do things I know how to do but would rather spend my time elsewhere. This is no different.

lallysingh 9y ago

As they're already tested and setup for Linux, I'd probably just go with one of their systems. It's just one less thing to worry about.

H1Supreme 9y ago

Exactly this. If you're a typical Linux user, you've probably already built computers from scratch. A MBP/MBA laptop aimed at Linux is where the need actually lies.

utexaspunk 9y ago

>Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. An ordinary desktop, perhaps, but a truly innovative product not so much. Consider something like Microsoft's Surface Studio and Surface Dial: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-studio/overview https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-stud... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/accessories/surface-dial https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/accessories/surface-... A Linux desktop with similarly novel modes of interaction would be awesome, and might be just the thing to bring the masses to Linux.