System76 Unveils 'Darter Pro' Linux Laptop With Choice of Ubuntu or Pop!_OS (betanews.com) 86
An anonymous reader writes: Today, System76 unveiled its latest laptop -- the 15.6-inch (full-HD) "Darter Pro." It is thin, but not overly so -- it still has USB-A ports (thankfully). The computer is quite modern, however, as it also has a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port. It supports Pop!_OS 18.04 LTS (64-bit), Pop!_OS 18.10 (64-bit), or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit) operating system. It comes in two variants, with the following processor options: 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8265U: 1.6 up to 3.90 GHz -- 6MB Cache -- 4 Cores -- 8 Threads, or 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8565U: 1.8 up to 4.60 GHz -- 8MB Cache -- 4 Cores -- 8 Threads, with either coupled with Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU, and up to 32GB Dual Channel DDR4 @ 2400 MHz, and M.2 SATA or PCIe NVMe SSD for storage. As for ports, there is USB 3.1 Type-C with Thunderbolt 3, 2 USB 3.0 Type-A, 1 x USB 2.0, SD Card Reader. The company says it will announce the pricing at a later stage,
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Global warming is the topic! Why waste the last 10 years of your life fighting with Microsoft and/or Apple software when you can have a Linux laptop!
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Why would you have ten years left to live, I have heard of no one who can make those guarantees. Climate change or not, you could be dead tomorrow or a week from now. How ever, if you do own a low lying seafront home, yeah, it will probably be dead, 'er', wave washed rubble within ten years, underwater front, it's a thing, get used to it. Definitely sell and do not buy, let some other sucker let their investment drown and 'DIE'. There is always stilt homes and amphibious vehicles, drive one of these https:/ [youtube.com]
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For those who do not like the Ubuntu UI.
The same question can be asked for any distribution.
Re:Why does Pop! OS exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why System76 puts out its own spin on debian is strategic to the manufacturer. They want to be able to control (and provide support) for the OS, which is intrinsic to building a consumer experience. They don't want to be at the mercy of the whims of debian or ubuntu corp (or microsoft for that matter).
Also, anyone who claims to be technically competent should be aware that linux isn't efficient with laptop power consumption, because it requires driver support (from the chip manufacturer) and kernel/OS support for various sleep modes. If you want a laptop that runs for hours off of battery, you going to get that extra hour from running windows or macOS (because between Microsoft/Apple and the hardware manufacturers, they're plowing a ton of proprietary work into it). If you run linux, then you probably won't be able to run your laptop off of battery for as long. But with Pop!OS, System76 could be incorporating more of those power efficient features by negotiating with the chip manufacturers and the mobo designer/manufacturer, but some of that customized work probably also needs to be in the OS. (I have no idea if System76 is actually doing this.)
You're not satisfied with Pop!OS? Fine, that's still the manufacturer's responsibility. But they aren't putting out Pop!OS out of egotism.
Re:Why does Pop! OS exist? (Score:5, Informative)
I take it you don't remember all of the abandonware distros put out on the netbooks, nettops and cheap desktops a decade ago that where all dead within a year only to be replaced with XP Starter edition.
Nope, don't remember that era, even though I was in my thirties at the time.
There is a reason Dell, HP Zareason, Puget Systems and many others use Ubuntu, they don't have to go through the hassle of maintaining an entire distro, they just provide packages and patches to Canonical and they add it to the repos.
You are aware that Ubuntu uses its base OS off of Debian packages? Ubuntu then tweaks whatever is coming off of Debian, including incorporating proprietary binary code into Ubuntu distributed packages. Its possible that I am wrong, but I believe Pop!OS is running off of Debian distributions as well.
The real reason why System76 wanted to get off Ubuntu was that Ubuntu for the past decade has been ineptly tilting at technical windmills where Ubuntu originally wanted its own Unity desktop, that had nothing directly to do with Gnome or KDE, and then their own rendering layer (Mir?), and eventually just gave up on all of it last(?) year. A lot of Ubuntu users abandoned Ubuntu in the past decade because of this, and System76 decided they couldn't risk losing their customer base being dependent on a poorly(?) managed OS distributor. System76 wanted to standardize its OS in a manner where they weren't dependent upon the whims of Ubuntu, and they're chasing business customers, so they know they don't have to provide the ultimate consumer experience.
So Pop!OS is very basic, its GUI is theirs, build off a lot of other linux windowing code, and they can ensure that their business customers can have a working laptop that works the same way four years from now. Don't think of System76 leaving a stable linux distribution; think of System76 leaving the Ubuntu base product for the Debian base product (that Ubuntu is based on), and Pop!OS tweaks off of Debian, rather than Ubuntu. In any case, I don't care. I just don't like anyone (or company) being pilloried over fanboy ignorance.
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Debian moves at a glacial pace, I have tried to use it in place of Ubuntu a few times, it was always a massive hassle trying to get things patched up enough to work where Ubuntu already had those packages and just worked.
Back in the 1990's, Slackware was my OS. Loved the damn thing to death. But (besides management issues based on Volkerding's health and at the time, his one man band approach), the fact that it was minimally "tweaked" became a huge problem for me, because I literally had to follow the "soap opera" of a lot of subpackages, and had to configure everything to make it work the way I wanted to (particularly for my laptop). So, at some point in the middle "aughts", I gave up on mastering everything and switche
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I take it you don't remember all of the abandonware distros put out on the netbooks, nettops and cheap desktops a decade ago that where all dead within a year only to be replaced with XP Starter edition.
Here in Huezil, around that time, I recall that OEMs got a tax relief for PCs sold with free software -- but it had to have local support. So we had those short-lived distros like Satux and Fenix. Not that it mattered, almost everyone just ran pirated XP on them.
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To let them integrate their hardware and make customizations that suit their customers? Why would a Linux distribution be a surprise? There are already like 300 of them.
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The sane thing to do is to just use Ubuntu
It is an Ubuntu variant.
wtf is pop os? (Score:1)
does it support snap packages and crackle streams?
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Be ready to pay over $1K for a disposable device (Score:2)
If I ever bother paying money for a laptop, its going to be a laptop with a separate GPU not dependent upon Intel Corp. My last laptop CPU was the Arrandale model, and the OS could not be upgraded to Windows 10, because Intel abandoned support for the CPU after 1.5 years. The problem was that the GPU didn't support advanced graphics primitives that became "expected" for Windows 10. Intel could have written an updated driver that would work in Windows 10, and ignored the obscure calls, or even made the AP
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I'll never understand why System76, Zareason, Purism, Think Penguin etc keep only ever offering Intel/Nvidia crap.
Simply, you're utterly ignorant of the manufacturing business. They're not there to make a laptop that makes their customers happiest. They're there to make a laptop as cheaply as possible, and then charge as much as possible, while still satisfying the majority of laptop purchasers who are not you (geek). They need to have a relationship with the various chip manufacturers, because those manufacturers provide an allocation of CPUs at a price, and those manufacturers are going to favor the the company th
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What do you want me to say? I have no proof laptop manufacturers will deliberately cripple AMD based products. I will say its quite possible in order for the laptop vendor to fit a pricing niche, they will deliberately do stupid things to cripple an AMD product, so it stays in the low price niche, and not compete with a higher margin product, which happens to be Intel based hardware But AMD probably is just as much to blame, because they can't produce enough of a particular CPU for the manufacturer to ad
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They're not there to make a laptop that makes their customers happiest. They're there to make a laptop as cheaply as possible, and then charge as much as possible, while still satisfying the majority of laptop purchasers who are not you (geek).
How many non-geeks are purchasing Linux laptops from System76, or speccing them for their employer? Answer, statistically nobody. Linux users care more about security than average.
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It depends on the laptop vendor. Some companies (Apple in the extreme) participate in the design. Some companies take what manufacturers offer. But they aren't the same complete board, with exact specs, or else one could figure out the generic board Dell gets, and buy a replacement board direct from the manufacturer. The mobo board maker doesn't take the responsibility for CPU allocation from Intel; they leave it to the laptop seller. They just give a rough number to their manufacturing capacity, and i
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and the OS could not be upgraded to Windows 10
And nothing of value was lost.
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Of course there was. Like it or not, laptops are going to be most power efficient on a Microsoft OS, because they own the Wintel market. One day that may change, but not until hardware chip manufacturers are designing their chips to be power efficient under linux, while linux kernel developers are incorporating those power saving features, and glibc, gcc, and GUIs are mandating power efficient code into their products. "Nice tweak, does it interfere with sleep mode 3X? Then it doesn't get put into the c
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He may have been going for "Oh, you can't upgrade to Windows 10. Intel did you a favor."
Meaning, if you are looking to "upgrade" you are coming from somewhere - Windows 7 or Windows 8.
If it's Windows 7, it's arguable that Intel really was doing you a favor. Windows 8 had a horrific interface but the OS underneath wasn't bad. ClassicShell fixed the UI problem.
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Yes, that: 10 is a headache, stay on 7 while you can.
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Not true at all, in fact one great big fat lie. For a computer to be efficient, it has to be efficient in the environment it is used. Just doing internet, and some spread sheeting and word processing, the majority of the market, than Linux is factually the most efficient OS. Want to play computer games, well, technically, "The operating system is Orbis OS, based on FreeBSD 9." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], is the most efficient. In a business environment it depends upon the main packages you use in tha
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how is MSN doing M$
Man, I remember that, talk about a wasted opportunity. They had Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Lync, Skype, Skype for Business, Teams... and you just wonder, what talks to what? What's the difference? Just make one goddamn chat program, make it good and polished and available in every platform. But instead they lost focus and people stopped using it.
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Just doing internet, and some spread sheeting and word processing, the majority of the market, than Linux is factually the most efficient OS.
Citation please.
Want to play computer games, well, technically, "The operating system is Orbis OS, based on FreeBSD 9." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]... [wikipedia.org], is the most efficient.
Yeah, gamers care about hardware efficiency, not what games are available to play on it. (Duh.) That's why Steam on Linux "owns" the gaming market. /s
In a business environment it depends upon the main packages you use in that environment.
I'll let the PlayStation4 penetration in the business market speak for itself. Again, you need to provide citations for you to claim "proof" or "fact".
In the server environment Linux absolutely craps all over Windows.
Yup, and when I need to buy a standalone server, I will probably run linux on it. But I was talking about laptops.
Yeah, let your fanboy flag fly, and use Trump style arguments to persuade th
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sure it's of value if you need 10 for some reason like compiling applications for it.
oh well at least windows phones dead so nobodys asking to make apps for that.. still. it's better than windows 8. and for the record I had to update to windows 8 because microsoft made(for no technical reason at all, mind you) mandatory to have windows 8 to be able to compile/develop windows phone apps.
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System76 makes linux laptops. Who cares if they fail to run windows - or the next version of windows? That is not what you buy them for. Perfectly fine for them to use components not supported by windows - as long as they support linux.
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And linux works fine under my old laptop with the Arrandale CPU. But I obviously can't use updated code that expects a graphics hardware primitive that the CPU can't deliver. And it doesn't run 2 hours on battery.
Multi-Color Backlit Chicklet Keyboard (Score:2)
Still Useless (Score:2)
The keyboard is not centered in front of the screen. The put it to the left to squeeze in a num pad.
Whatever you think about macbooks, they didn't compromise on the keyboard placement.
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Which keyboard position that is best for you depends on your typing style.
You could avoid problems with your wrists if you hold them as straight as you can while you type.
Some people (like me) do type with their right hand angled to the left, with the fingers somewhat aligned with the slanted "columns" of the keyboard. If the alphabetic keyboard is a bit to the left of centre, then my right wrist is straight and my left wrist is only slightly angled.
I have seen other people type the other way around: with t
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"Whatever you think about macbooks, they didn't compromise on the keyboard placement."
From what I've seen at work, a LOT of people want a number pad more than they care about the keyboard being centered.
Me, i couldn't care less about a number pad... if i need one ill use an external keyboard. But lots of people at work are specifically requesting units with number pads.
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So make it an option. I'm not buying it in it's current form.
Re:Still Useless (Score:4, Informative)
-shrug- I'd buy the galago pro myself anyway, which doesn't have a numeric keypad -- and i like the smaller form factor.
https://system76.com/laptops/g... [system76.com]
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If you need to enter a lot of numbers, the numeric keypad is worthwhile. For example, if you're using a trading terminal, or dealing with a lot of IPv4 addresses, or various kinds of data entry. It's also useful if you use a keyboard layout that uses the topmost row for additional letters/diacritics (e.g. Japanese Kana, or Viet TCVN 6064) so you can type numbers without having to hold Option/Alt. And if you're a hardcore vim user, you can enable application keypad mode and map the numeric keypad to diffe
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My laptop is like that and it's fine. Of far more concern is the quality of the keyboard. Most laptop keyboards are awful.
The photo isn't very good, but it looks like this machine may have a bit of travel.
Hackintosh (Score:2, Insightful)
If someone came out with a machine like this or the Oryx Pro that was completely compatible with macOS, they'd make a lot of people happy. Ship it with a common Linux distro so that it's good to go out of the box, but ensure all the bits play nice with macOS.
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I recall one company attempted that and Apple crushed it with lawyers.
Just forget it. Using a hackintosh professionally is suicidal. You're using a system whose developers try their damnedest to make it NOT run on your unauthorized machine. Even if you get it to work now, the next version could break completely. (Trust me, happened to me.)
Pop!_OS (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA: "When people come to me for advice on buying a computer that comes with a Linux-based operating system pre-installed, my first suggestion is always System76. While other companies, such as Dell, also make great laptops running Ubuntu, for instance, System76 stands above the rest by also offering its own operating system -- Pop!_OS (which is based on Ubuntu). In other words, System76 has better control over the overall customer experience."
My own "overall customer experience" with the Thelio that I recently bought was this: It came with Pop!_OS, which I dutifully tried out. Its quirks and limitations were so irritating that within three days I gave up on it, wiped the drive and installed Ubuntu MATE, and everything has been running smoothly since then. Great hardware. I have no idea what they are trying to do with Pop!_OS, though.
You gotta love.... (Score:1)
Anyone with the balls to name an OS project Pop!_OS. Hands down the stupidest name for a project ever.
Advert? (Score:1)
This just seems like an advert.
Maybe it's different over there in the States, but here in Europe there are plenty of companies selling bare-bones laptops (by the likes of MSI and Clevo) without an OS installed. As components these days are largely standard (same chipsets, same CPUs, same GPUs), Linux runs just as well on them as it does on companies who make a point of mentioning Linux.
Buy one of those, boot up Ubuntu from a memory stick and bam, all done.
(I guess if you want someone to install Linux for yo