4 ms·

I too have thought for a long time there needs to be a for-profit company that focuses on a polished Linux distro. Sure there is Canonical but IMHO they're not

I too have thought for a long time there needs to be a for-profit company that focuses on a polished Linux distro. Sure there is Canonical but IMHO they're not doing such a great job on the polish side of things. There is system76 with "Pop OS!" but I would like to see a company who's entire focus is on release a very slick OS _only_.

mcv 7y ago
I think we really need the system76 approach. The only way to make a profit on a desktop Linux is to take the Apple approach of selling hardware with the OS preinstalled and tuned for that hardware. By all means make the OS downloadable separately, share with the community and all that, but to make a profit, you need to sell hardware. And the hardware needs to be good.
- dastx 7y ago
  > And the hardware needs to be good. So I am about to start a new job, and the new workplace was about to send a new Macbook Pro out to me, which I didn't want. So I went to do some research for a laptop with any Linux distro preinstalled so that I could go back to them and tell them I'd rather have this. I found out that there is no decent laptop with Linux preinstalled. System76 has some decent systems, but they didn't come close to what the likes of Dell and Lenovo offer with Windows. For now System76 seems to show most potential in this area though, so it will be interesting to see what they do going forward.
  - commoner 7y ago
    Dell's developer edition laptops have Ubuntu preinstalled and are well-received: https://www.dell.com/linux https://www.dell.com/linux Lenovo's upcoming ThinkPad laptops include some models with preinstalled Fedora as an option: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22968280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22968280
    - dastx 7y ago
      The Dell XPS developer edition is a great little laptop, however, my issue with it was that it only came in 13" size. My ex-collegue had one and played around with it for a bit, it was great except for the screen size. The announcement regarding Lenovo's upcoming ThinkPad laptops coming with Fedora pre-installed came a literally 1 or 2 days after I'd already ordered the P1 Gen 2, which according to Canonical is certified[0] to run Linux correctly, and it's the reason I went for that. Regardless, the next generation would have left me without a laptop for the job. [0] https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201908-27280 https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201908-27280

mcv 7y ago

I think we really need the system76 approach. The only way to make a profit on a desktop Linux is to take the Apple approach of selling hardware with the OS preinstalled and tuned for that hardware. By all means make the OS downloadable separately, share with the community and all that, but to make a profit, you need to sell hardware. And the hardware needs to be good.

dastx 7y ago
> And the hardware needs to be good. So I am about to start a new job, and the new workplace was about to send a new Macbook Pro out to me, which I didn't want. So I went to do some research for a laptop with any Linux distro preinstalled so that I could go back to them and tell them I'd rather have this. I found out that there is no decent laptop with Linux preinstalled. System76 has some decent systems, but they didn't come close to what the likes of Dell and Lenovo offer with Windows. For now System76 seems to show most potential in this area though, so it will be interesting to see what they do going forward.
- commoner 7y ago
  Dell's developer edition laptops have Ubuntu preinstalled and are well-received: https://www.dell.com/linux https://www.dell.com/linux Lenovo's upcoming ThinkPad laptops include some models with preinstalled Fedora as an option: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22968280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22968280
  - dastx 7y ago
    The Dell XPS developer edition is a great little laptop, however, my issue with it was that it only came in 13" size. My ex-collegue had one and played around with it for a bit, it was great except for the screen size. The announcement regarding Lenovo's upcoming ThinkPad laptops coming with Fedora pre-installed came a literally 1 or 2 days after I'd already ordered the P1 Gen 2, which according to Canonical is certified[0] to run Linux correctly, and it's the reason I went for that. Regardless, the next generation would have left me without a laptop for the job. [0] https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201908-27280 https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201908-27280