System76 Still Aiming To Be The Apple Of The Linux Space With Software & Hardware

[M@GOid]

While I applaud their intent to build a strong hardware brand based on Linux software, I hope they don't succumb to some bad habits Apple has, like putting looks over functionality.

Their last workstation lacks frontal USB ports, or any frontal ports for that matter. Also, the back of the chassis have a dedicated cutout for the motherboard used, meaning that if it dies, you are forced to try to buy the exact same model. Downs the road not even System76 will be capable to provide you one, at the same time you cannot upgrade using that expensive chassis that you paid for with your hard earned money.

So in short, they better provide basic functionality for a clientele that is used to have those.

[schmidtbag]

Holy hell people, read the damn article. Many of you are jumping to the worst conclusion about their goals. They're not saying they want to be Apple in the sense they want to create their own ecosystem, all-proprietary tech, and denying you the right to repair. Read more than just the headline and you'll realize they're heading in the opposite direction.

Sometimes you Stallmanities care so much about your principles that you completely ignore the things Apple is actually good at; which are the things System76 is striving for. They're just looking to create a classy and tightly integrated product, something the Linux ecosystem doesn't really have.
Was Apple the best example for them to aspire to? Maybe not, but I personally can't think of a better one.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

They're not saying they want to be Apple in the sense they want to create their own ecosystem, all-proprietary tech, and denying you the right to repair.

They could use common infrastructure for BIOS updates instead of their own. I can upgrade BIOS on Dell and ThinkPad laptops via fwupd.org, so it's astonishing to see that System76 does not cooperate with infrastructure that used by everybody else.

[zxy_thf]

In Linux space, Apple is probably the last thing they want people to associate them with.

In Linux space, Apple wannabes are many, Apple-likes are none.
Apple almost controls everything in their hardware systems except for the x86 processor and discrete GPUs, and controls everything in their software system including the compilers.

Only IBM (and probably other old-fashioned UNIX vendors) had such kind of influences over the product.

I can't see how it (becoming Apple) could turn into reality, for an institution that almost has zero control/contribution among their system components -- they are not even shipping their own distro.

P.S. RedHat is the closest one, but it's not mainly targeting consumers.

[schmidtbag]

They could use common infrastructure for BIOS updates instead of their own. I can upgrade BIOS on Dell and ThinkPad laptops via fwupd.org, so it's astonishing to see that System76 does not cooperate with infrastructure that used by everybody else.

So... what do you make of Coreboot then? Because if you want them to use a common infrastructure, you're probably going to have to give that up.

[SpyroRyder]

They're not saying they want to be Apple in the sense they want to create their own ecosystem, all-proprietary tech, and denying you the right to repair.

We have all been following this for a while now and while theyre not as bad as Canonical when it comes to NIH linux stuff they are leaning that direction. Pop!_OS, which i still dont know how anyone on their staff types that with a straight face, is an example of this. There are multitudes of distros that they could have gone with easily when Ubuntu stopped working for them, most of which would even have been happy to create a Sys76 version with extra stuff, but they instead just took an ubuntu base and a kinda shitty theme and built their own from there.

[Venemo]

I still don't understand how somebody can claim that a laptop is Linux friendly, as long as said laptop has NVidia graphics.

[polarathene]

planning to lock their customers into their own proprietary solution for firmware updates.

Wut?

https://github.com/system76

https://github.com/pop-os/firmware-manager

https://github.com/system76/firmware-update

Please tell me what's proprietary about that? View the repo link for firmware-manager and have a good read, it supports fwupd and they explain why they've written it. So how aren't they supporting fwupd exactly?

[anarki2]

"Linux" vs "integrated". Yeah, good luck with that.

[Guest]

I would argue that there is a large enough niche for well designed software and hardware in the Linux community, only it has to be done right. Otherwise you end up with abominations like Gnome. Copying Apple UI design and UX is not as easy as it looks.

Copying Apple is a bad idea. It seems that whenever someone tries to do that, they focus on bad rather than good, and you end up with over-exaggerated attempts at ripping off Apple, where only bad ideas are taken into consideration. If they decide to go full retard and solder in the SSD, and put a crypto chip that makes it impossible to even copy data off a dead laptop, and make sure only their software runs on it, the result will be a disaster. I assume this statement will make their brand dead to tech-savvy people who want to set up their preferred distro and simply expect hardware that's well supported. Oh wait, they put Nvidia GPUs into their laptops, so that demographic is looking elsewhere.

I assume that people who (seemingly) care about ease of use are willing to lock themselves into a crappy ecosystem, and ignore freedom and vendor lock-in, so they're fine with either running Windows or buying jewelry fruit computers.