System76 Unveils Thelio "Open" Desktops With Intel/AMD CPU Options, NVIDIA/Radeon GPUs

[madscientist159]

I ran a full desktop on a Raspberry Pi, back in late 2015. I used the Raspberry Pi 1, Model B+. I had it overclocked to 1.2GHz(I could get it to 1.4GHz, but it wasn't stable enough to work with). By setting GPU memory to 32MB and dedicating the rest a system memory, using Midori for most web browsing, it was actually usable. I hooked up 2 USB sticks, a 16GB one for extra storage, and an 8GB one(with 4GB as more extra storage, and 4GB as swap), that probably wasn't the best or fastest solution, but it worked. The Raspberry Pi, and the powered USB hub for my WifI card, mouse/keyboard and USB sticks were all powered from a 15W solar panel full-time(I had a 12v 8Ah battery, and some cell-phone chargers).

Yes it can be done, but it is definitely a limiting experience. I tend to have dozens of tabs open in Chrome for instance on any machine I use, and the RPi would run out of memory or start swapping very quickly with that kind of workload.

[gabber]

Ryzen 5 2600x / 2x8GB / 512 M.2 / RX550 + some MoBo + some Gold NT --> 900.- / They want 1600.-
That's asking a bit too much.

[mzs.112000]

Yes it can be done, but it is definitely a limiting experience. I tend to have dozens of tabs open in Chrome for instance on any machine I use, and the RPi would run out of memory or start swapping very quickly with that kind of workload.

If I were to re-create that kind of a setup today, I would likely use the RPi 3 B+, Rock64 or the RockPro64...
Actually, the RockPro64 with 4GB of RAM, USB 3.0, and real PCIe support would make a quite capable desktop computer....

Since it has PCIe x4, I wonder if one could put in a regular GPU(with it's own power supply) and game on that thing(Minetest, and a few other open-source games all have ARM64 ports in the Ubuntu Repos)?

[madscientist159]

If I were to re-create that kind of a setup today, I would likely use the RPi 3 B+, Rock64 or the RockPro64...
Actually, the RockPro64 with 4GB of RAM, USB 3.0, and real PCIe support would make a quite capable desktop computer....

Since it has PCIe x4, I wonder if one could put in a regular GPU(with it's own power supply) and game on that thing(Minetest, and a few other open-source games all have ARM64 ports in the Ubuntu Repos)?

At least some of the rockchip parts don't have blobs (no thanks to the vendor, but at least they didn't enforce signing checks on those SoCs yet). However it's still a major step back from a modern desktop class machine -- development and such will be fairly miserable (I've used such machines recently and found them seriously lacking).

[wizard69]

I tend to agree that the offerings are somewhat disappointing but you have to start someplace. The prices are not as unreasonable as some think, engineering cost money and that means charging to cover the expenses. For a low volume product like this the fabrication costs are likely manageable especially with the mix in of off shore parts. So I’m actually pleased that the prices are not as bad as they could have been.

[BillBroadley]

I configured a pretty minimal core i7 model. 32GB ram, gtx 2070, 256GB ssd and it was $2,500. Not terrible for a premium system. But it's pretty huge and has no 64GB option. Seems strangely limited. A 14 liter computer, that costs $2,500 and has a max ram of 32GB? Seems really low for that class system. Should you really need a dorm fridge size computer for 64GB ram? The servers I build have 1TB and I fit 2 of those systems per 1U (1.75" tall in a rack).

[kpedersen]

I very much appreciate Micheal's title using "Open" rather than "open-source".
System76 are basically breaking trade laws with false advertising. I can only put them down as a bunch of non-ethical fsck(8)-bags.

Surely people could take them to court over this right? People take Apple to court over much smaller things. At least Apple never stated that covering the antenna with your thumb would eliminate signal. Whereas System76 would state "Covering your provided open-source antenna with a thumb will certainly not kill the signal" and then proceed to not even provide an antenna

[tuxd3v]

ho boy..
The kid inside me,
Witing for a power beast or a arm beast like this: Hi1610
And after all, in the Christmas tree, there is the usual.. a tree..

[leiptrstormr]

I very much appreciate Micheal's title using "Open" rather than "open-source".
System76 are basically breaking trade laws with false advertising. I can only put them down as a bunch of non-ethical fsck(8)-bags.

I thought it was a bit strange when they provided a SATA backplane instead of an actual machine.
It looks like the actual motherboards will be made in the USA Gigabyte.

https://github.com/system76/thelio/blob/master/Thelio%20Common/Bill%20of%20Materials%20(BOM)/thelio-systems-bom.csv

[ThoreauHD]

I don't understand what the linux or even open source value add is here. Am I missing a firmware change or IME disable or something. It's a very nice linux box, but it has fk all open sourced hardware in there.