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The Linux community really does eat its own. For a long time the question was - when will there be a Linux supporting laptop. Now a company comes and does it

The Linux community really does eat its own. For a long time the question was - when will there be a Linux supporting laptop. Now a company comes and does it and the complaint is they aren't bespoke enough.

twblalock 8y ago
This particular complaint is that they are just rebranding OEM hardware, so you might as well just buy the OEM hardware.
- jackpot51 8y ago
  The OEM hardware does not have our custom firmware, our WiFi and drive selection, our testing, or our support. Those things may not all be perfect, but they do make a big difference.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Aren't you the same fellow who suggested to me a few months ago that Redox was a realistic, superior alternative to running OpenBSD in production?
    - jackpot51 8y ago
      I never said anything of the sort, and would be surprised if you could provide any evidence of this. Redox is not ready for production and I am not hesitant to admit so.
      - busterarm 8y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15843918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15843918 Feel free to read the two parent comments and the responses to the one linked.
        slededit 8y ago
        That appears to be him asking a question. Its not evidence for any of your claims.
        busterarm 8y ago
        If the creator of a toy operating system has to ask why his toy operating system isn't a competitor of something that's been run in production for 20 years, it either isn't a question or something worse. But it's nice to know that I can just phrase all of my statements in the form of a question and then I can never be held accountable for stating them.
    - theprotocol 8y ago
      He made a simple statement that he believes his company provides additional value over the OEM machines. You may or may not find it compelling, but I don't see the relevance of Redox.
smacktoward 8y ago
As someone who uses Linux on a laptop (ThinkPad) and would love to support a Linux-first laptop vendor, the question I've always had about System76 specifically is: what value exactly do they add? System76's pitch is that they add value by ironing out all the compatibility issues Linux can have on laptops, so they "just work" the way macOS does on MacBooks and Windows does on ThinkPads and Dell XPSes. But they're maddeningly vague about precisely what compatibility issues they're ironing out, at least in their public-facing marketing materials. Those make their pitch instead on the quality of their hardware -- a front where they are inevitably doomed to lose to deeper-pocketed OEMs like the ones mentioned above -- and on their coming with a custom flavor of Linux called "Pop!_OS", which as far as I'm concerned is an anti-feature. I don't want to be locked into some hardware vendor's custom Linux ghetto just to get hardware compatibility; I want to run mainstream distros like Ubuntu, Fedora or Debian. You can get a System76 machine with Ubuntu, but if the hardware "just works" with Ubuntu, why muddle the message by trying to get me to convert to a whole new distro? And if it doesn't "just work" with Ubuntu, why offer that option in the first place? It's all very confusing, and leaves me with the vague feeling that they're talking about just about anything they can talk about other than what specifically they're doing to improve Linux's compatibility with laptop hardware. And that makes me worry that they're just taking generic hardware from some Chinese factory and installing Linux on it. If that's what I wanted, I could do it myself, you know? Note that I'm not saying here that they aren't doing important work improving compatibility. What I'm saying is that, if they're doing that work, they're doing a really good job of hiding it from potential customers. Which is mystifying, since that is the one thing their potential customers would actually care about.
- slededit 8y ago
  Don't you find it a little ironic posting this in reply to a blog where they mention exactly what they are doing to make open source firmware work better? You can say they aren't working on the right things - or that they aren't doing enough. All fair - but clearly they aren't just installing Linux on OEM laptops.
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    No, not really. I was talking about the stuff you see when you go to buy a System76 laptop, i.e. https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops. And as an outsider to this particular corner of the Linux world, what I've seen following this back-and-forth is a fight between System76 and someone from GNOME who says System76 is making his life more difficult. As someone who uses GNOME on all his machines, that is not the kind of relationship between a hardware vendor and the GNOME project that would encourage me to buy their hardware.

twblalock 8y ago

This particular complaint is that they are just rebranding OEM hardware, so you might as well just buy the OEM hardware.

jackpot51 8y ago
The OEM hardware does not have our custom firmware, our WiFi and drive selection, our testing, or our support. Those things may not all be perfect, but they do make a big difference.
- busterarm 8y ago
  Aren't you the same fellow who suggested to me a few months ago that Redox was a realistic, superior alternative to running OpenBSD in production?
  - jackpot51 8y ago
    I never said anything of the sort, and would be surprised if you could provide any evidence of this. Redox is not ready for production and I am not hesitant to admit so.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15843918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15843918 Feel free to read the two parent comments and the responses to the one linked.
      - slededit 8y ago
        That appears to be him asking a question. Its not evidence for any of your claims.
        busterarm 8y ago
        If the creator of a toy operating system has to ask why his toy operating system isn't a competitor of something that's been run in production for 20 years, it either isn't a question or something worse. But it's nice to know that I can just phrase all of my statements in the form of a question and then I can never be held accountable for stating them.
  - theprotocol 8y ago
    He made a simple statement that he believes his company provides additional value over the OEM machines. You may or may not find it compelling, but I don't see the relevance of Redox.

smacktoward 8y ago

As someone who uses Linux on a laptop (ThinkPad) and would love to support a Linux-first laptop vendor, the question I've always had about System76 specifically is: what value exactly do they add? System76's pitch is that they add value by ironing out all the compatibility issues Linux can have on laptops, so they "just work" the way macOS does on MacBooks and Windows does on ThinkPads and Dell XPSes. But they're maddeningly vague about precisely what compatibility issues they're ironing out, at least in their public-facing marketing materials. Those make their pitch instead on the quality of their hardware -- a front where they are inevitably doomed to lose to deeper-pocketed OEMs like the ones mentioned above -- and on their coming with a custom flavor of Linux called "Pop!_OS", which as far as I'm concerned is an anti-feature. I don't want to be locked into some hardware vendor's custom Linux ghetto just to get hardware compatibility; I want to run mainstream distros like Ubuntu, Fedora or Debian. You can get a System76 machine with Ubuntu, but if the hardware "just works" with Ubuntu, why muddle the message by trying to get me to convert to a whole new distro? And if it doesn't "just work" with Ubuntu, why offer that option in the first place? It's all very confusing, and leaves me with the vague feeling that they're talking about just about anything they can talk about other than what specifically they're doing to improve Linux's compatibility with laptop hardware. And that makes me worry that they're just taking generic hardware from some Chinese factory and installing Linux on it. If that's what I wanted, I could do it myself, you know? Note that I'm not saying here that they aren't doing important work improving compatibility. What I'm saying is that, if they're doing that work, they're doing a really good job of hiding it from potential customers. Which is mystifying, since that is the one thing their potential customers would actually care about.

slededit 8y ago
Don't you find it a little ironic posting this in reply to a blog where they mention exactly what they are doing to make open source firmware work better? You can say they aren't working on the right things - or that they aren't doing enough. All fair - but clearly they aren't just installing Linux on OEM laptops.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  No, not really. I was talking about the stuff you see when you go to buy a System76 laptop, i.e. https://system76.com/laptops https://system76.com/laptops. And as an outsider to this particular corner of the Linux world, what I've seen following this back-and-forth is a fight between System76 and someone from GNOME who says System76 is making his life more difficult. As someone who uses GNOME on all his machines, that is not the kind of relationship between a hardware vendor and the GNOME project that would encourage me to buy their hardware.