System76 COSMIC Desktop Ironing Out Support For Themes, Application API

[sophisticles]

Then this is a fundamental misunderstanding in how businesses operate. As you may learn from an Econ. or Bus. course: profit is an output, not a purpose. Profit is a means for the purpose, rather than being the purpose itself. Successful businesses have a reason to exist that goes beyond mere profit. Businesses whose purpose are to extract profit are an exception, not the rule. These usually call themselves "money managers" or "investment groups".

You know who disagrees with you? The IRS:

https://mazumausa.com/how-many-years-can-i-take-a-loss-on-my-business/

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-business-loss-taxes-30737.html

By law, the purpose of a business is to make a profit, that is all. If you own a business you can only claim a loss 3 out of 5 tax years, if you loss money for more than 3 out of 5 years then the IRS will reclassify your business as a hobby, for an LLC it's 2 years max.

This line "profit is an output, not a purpose" is some liberal hippie nonsense that some drug addicted loser dreamt up while stoned on mushrooms.

Which is fine. System76's purpose is being successfully fulfilled.

So System76's purpose is to not make a dime? Fine by me, not my investment.

But if they want to change the world, they should try and make as much money as possible and then if they want to donate all the profits to charities, so be it, hell I used to volunteer as a CMA in an Oncology Unit and I donate to Saint Jude's every month, I have no problem with trying to help out your fellow man.

But that is separate and distinct from business, the sole purpose of a business is to make as much money as possible.

[sophisticles]

As someone who want's to look into selling S76 machines either their machines or my own hand built ones, this would absolutely make it so I would not bother selling them. I know others feel the same way I do. PopOS already has a competitive edge compared to other distros in the effort and polish going into it. Gnome has been a major turn off for me due to it's poor performance and the absolute absurd amount of effort needed to be dumped into customization. which is necessary for supporting A11y to any proper degree.

Cosmic can be potentially what puts S76 machines into my customers hands. Pop OS doesn't need killer apps. it just needs to be easy to offer support for. every other distro has major problems in this regard but pop could be the distro that's different. as it stands, Selling windows PCs is expensive for any reputable compute salesmen. because we also have to support these machines. and oh boy they need a lot of support lately.

Most Issues I have with pop are already solvable. I hate their choice for default bootloader. I hate gnome. I don't like how outdated some apps can be, (pains of a more stable OS I suppose). A little too much pre-installed stuff last I checked. and soome other nits. all of these are easily solvable with a couple scripts and flatpak.

What?!? You want to sell S76 machines?!? So your plan is to buy them from System76 and the resell them at presumably a profit?

Why would anyone buy a S76 machine from you and not buy it directly from them?

As for selling custom, hand built machines, I think you, like the System76 people, might be about 30 years too late.

Here's the cold reality, the economy sucks, there's no liquidity in the economy, inflation is still running historically high, wages are trending downward and most people do not have the disposable income to impulse buy.

Add to that the Linux users tend to be DIYers and then factor in that most surveys have Linux use at less than 1% of the total desktop market, and you end up with the reality that your intended client base is non-existent.

I don't even have to look at System76's P&L to know they are not making any money.

When you consider that once COSMIC is released every other major distros will have spins featuring it within a week, there go their, and your, potential clients.

[Quackdoc]

What?!? You want to sell S76 machines?!? So your plan is to buy them from System76 and the resell them at presumably a profit?

Why would anyone buy a S76 machine from you and not buy it directly from them?

Because that is fundamentally how computer stores operate. the same could be said about literally any other computer we sell, we charge a decent markup, and provide services in exchange for that.

As for selling custom, hand built machines, I think you, like the System76 people, might be about 30 years too late.

Here's the cold reality, the economy sucks, there's no liquidity in the economy, inflation is still running historically high, wages are trending downward and most people do not have the disposable income to impulse buy.

And yet people are still buying computers.

Add to that the Linux users tend to be DIYers and then factor in that most surveys have Linux use at less than 1% of the total desktop market, and you end up with the reality that your intended client base is non-existent.

That's not how this works, People buy what is available to them, they go to walmart, they go to bestbuy, or the small town computer store, and buy often what they recommend if their budget is fine. My client base is the people who go into a PC store, buy a PC, go home and use it. My client base doesn't care if it's windows, chromebook or osx.

I don't even have to look at System76's P&L to know they are not making any money.

When you consider that once COSMIC is released every other major distros will have spins featuring it within a week, there go their, and your, potential clients.

I can't say how much profit they make, or loose, but considering they haven't gone under I wouldn't say it's a terrible situation for them. Cosmic is not the only selling point of popOS.

[blackiwid]

Maybe we should ask: Finally the year of the Linux Desktop approaching ;D ?

I think the statement is a framing and nearly straw-manning in itself, if we would ask the year of linux as enduser plattform, that would be a much more open question, it doesn't smuggle in the specific solution to the problem, like to enduser to use it it must be a "Desktop".

Now Android is very successful, yet it's no classical desktop, or let's look at steam full-screen, also with steamos very successful but also no real "desktop".

Why do we use the word that points to something similar to windows 95 or so. Why does the question include the answer. What if tomorrow people would all switch to linux but use Sway, sway is a tiling wm no desktop... would that not be the year of the linux desktop/dominance?

Or let's look at Chromium it's basically a fullscreen browser no real desktop, Is it the year of the linux OS for End users, that would be the more precise or more important question that doesn't discount dominance just because it's not like a windows 95 Desktop.

So let's think a world where steamos becomes the primary gaming platform which could happen, much more likely than let's say Ubuntu, are there more "Desktop non-gaming users" many people today do 99-100% of what people did on computers with smartphones.

So I think especially with the overprised Graphics cards Desktop users will be mostly developers and designers only, the rest will use steam decks and the competitors from Asus and soon lenovo or smartphones and switch boxes. And if you have only developers use "desktops" then why not should Linux have shot for that?