System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops Beginning January 2020 (forbes.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Forbes: Denver-based PC manufacturer and Pop!_OS Linux developer System76 plans to follow-up its custom Thelio desktop PC with an in-house laptop beginning next year, according to founder and CEO Carl Richell. During a recent interview, Richell was quick to emphasize that the entire process of designing, prototyping and iterating the final product could take two to three years. But the company is eager to break into this market and put the same signature "stamp" on its laptop hardware that graces its custom-built Thelio desktop.
System76 sells an extensive lineup of laptops, but the machines are designed by the likes of Sager and Clevo. The company doesn't merely buy a chassis and slap Pop!_OS on it, but Richell tells me he's confident that with the experience gained from developing Thelio -- and the recent investment into a factory at the company's Denver headquarters -- System76 is capable of building a laptop from the ground up that meets market needs and carries a unique value proposition. Richell says the company's first priority is locking down the aesthetic of the laptop and how various materials look and feel. It will simultaneously begin working on the supply chain aspects and speaking with various display and component manufacturers. System76 will design and build a U-class laptop first (basically an Ultrabook form factor like the existing Darter and Galago) and then evaluate what it might do with higher-end gaming and workstation notebooks with dedicated graphics.
System76 sells an extensive lineup of laptops, but the machines are designed by the likes of Sager and Clevo. The company doesn't merely buy a chassis and slap Pop!_OS on it, but Richell tells me he's confident that with the experience gained from developing Thelio -- and the recent investment into a factory at the company's Denver headquarters -- System76 is capable of building a laptop from the ground up that meets market needs and carries a unique value proposition. Richell says the company's first priority is locking down the aesthetic of the laptop and how various materials look and feel. It will simultaneously begin working on the supply chain aspects and speaking with various display and component manufacturers. System76 will design and build a U-class laptop first (basically an Ultrabook form factor like the existing Darter and Galago) and then evaluate what it might do with higher-end gaming and workstation notebooks with dedicated graphics.
Source Code (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Source Code (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope they include the source code to drivers. I have a System 76 laptop that works great with Haiku, but the sound recorder does not work. The Haiku driver has problems and I can't get the info I need to write my own audio input driver. The input works fine in Pop_OS so I know it is not the hardware, but I need the info to write my own drivers.
Try a call to alsamixer, the good old ncurses gui. If you have blacked out functions and all there is is a pulse control then check to see if the alsa install and implementation has your mic input muted. A call to f6 in the alsamixer gui will tell you what the underlying chipset is and you can override pulse with alsamixer if necessary.
Either way if you do a simple lspci you should see which audio chipset is on the board. If this is configured wrong in the distro and pulse has Bjorked alsa then it will be a PITA to get the audio to work unless you force a different alsa config. But if the distro's kernel is not setup correctly with alsa in the first place the job of changing the alsa settings gets complicated and unnecessary. These days just find a distro that has it right.
I remember well when Pottering's baby Pulse Bjorked the hell out of the once stellar alsa config of ice1712 chips. But back in those days it was easy to turn off all the bullshit pulse layer and run recording and other audio software like audacity or jack based recording setups straight up as an alsa device. The terminal is your friend when it comes to audio devices, pulse and all the invisible gui windows like shit can easily become your enemy especially if the distro is setup wrong for use with distros that require the use of pulse audio. Which these days is just about all of them.
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Too bad there is no layer for alsa drivers in Haiku though. If the community did one then I am sure just about every audio chipset would be supported. Considering that BSD opensound is available you might be able to find your chipset there if you are lucky. BSD can be problematic because newer chipsets that rely upon jack sensing functions also rely upon much more detailed configuration of the softw
We need a Mac Mini/Intel NUC like pc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey System76!
Build us a Mac Mini/Intel NUC sized linux box with the pending AMD Zen2/Ryzen 3000 APU.
Make sure linux works well, it's silent, and ideally include a ANSI mount so you can mount it invisibly on just about every LCD panel on the planet. You can re-use all the laptop parts, just make sure it has a M.2 slot (or two) and two dimm slots.
Re:We need a Mac Mini/Intel NUC like pc. (Score:4, Interesting)
Build it with a Power CPU - from Wikipedia:
" In August 2019, IBM announced it would be open-sourcing the Power ISA. As part of the move, it was also announced that administration of the OpenPower Foundation will now be handled by the Linux Foundation. "
Re:We need a Mac Mini/Intel NUC like pc. (Score:4, Insightful)
The ISA may be open sourced but a lot of the microarch work is still behind red tape. With an open ISA you can make a POWER compliant cpu but with none of the optimizations that IBM or Freescale have in theirs.
Better to go with RISCV. It's not completely done but it will have feature parity with ARM and x86 soon. Linux development is also keeping pace with ISA development as well. Debian already runs on it and so do many major applications.
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I think these sort of things will come but in the short term they need to shift boxes with more margin to build their business.
I love what System76 are doing - taking Linux and integrating it properly with good quality hardware and then giving some style. Apple for people who know what they are doing, and could spend time building their own system, but actually want a solid platform that is science and data focussed which they can use as an appliance. Turn it on and it just works.
I have been using Linux sin
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Yeah, a 2015 Macbook pro, 13" is good for me, although they seemed to sell a lot of 15" ones too. Just copy the aesthetic in every way you can, but maybe put another half a mm between screen and keyboard when the lid is closed.
I'd like an ARM inside, although I see other posters calling for PowerPC (or OpenRISC) - the latter are all somewhat untested, whereas ARM is very much a known quantity (and there's already Raspbian and others for a starting point). If that's too much of a reach, then yeah, an AMD wil
Centered trackpad & keyboard on 17" please!!! (Score:3)
The off-center trackpad is why I would never buy a System76 Gazelle or Oryx no matter how well it runs Linux. It is so unfortunate that so many laptop makers make the trackpad and keyboard off-center when they add a number pad whether for 15" or 17". An off-center keyboard and trackpad make a laptop hard to use in your lap.
The MacBook Pro (15 and 16"), Dell XPS 15, and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme (15") -- as well as the LG Gram 17 (with an almost-centered trackpad) -- are examples worth considering.
Other innovations by different vendors to address this concern include making the trackpad a display with a number pad mode for when people really want that.
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I would argue instead that they are thinking this through and doing the right thing.
The position of the alphanumeric keypad, wherever it is, contains the home position for your hands - and the trackpad is relative to that position.
The wrong thing to do IMHO would be to have the trackpad at a different position from the keyboard's centre on different sizes of laptop.
Trackpoint mouse (Score:1)
Any laptop I buy must have a trackpoint "nipple" mouse. Hard requirement, absolute deal breaker.
That said, I would love to buy a System 76 laptop.
Make a laptop with a 15" screen, a trackpoint mouse, understated style, and a weight no higher than a Thinkpad X1 (the Thinkpad X1 Extreme is too heavy for a frequent traveler dealing with international carry-on weight limit limits) - and I will be happy to pay a premium price for it.
But yeah, centered touchpad too. C'mon. That's just basic good design.
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In-house laptop. (Score:2)
Translation: We're reselling Clevo.
Custom cases, not custom hardware. (Score:5, Insightful)
I looked at the System76 Thelio desktop and lo and behold, it's just a custom case with a Gigabyte X399 Designare EX motherboard and other OEM parts. The least they could have done is port coreboot to the motherboard they selected.
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I looked at the System76 Thelio desktop and lo and behold, it's just a custom case with a Gigabyte X399 Designare EX motherboard and other OEM parts.
That's being a bit harsh don't you think? While the motherboard is indeed as you say, they've developed their own IO controller backplane for the the hard drives which you can find the firmware for here [github.com]. Which I have to hand it to them, putting together an IO controller isn't a small task for a company that's not very large. They've also got a SAS controller that they've built which you can find the firmware at the same location I just gave you. The SAS is for the beefier system they sell.
The least they could have done is port coreboot to the motherboard they selected
Well who they
Good (Score:3)
As far as coreboot, if I remember right, they're working on porting coreboot to more of their devices. The fact that they have it on any still puts them a step above almost every other prebuilt company I am familiar with.
I can't wait (Score:2)
I'm so excited. A 1985 station wagon wood panel throwback on a laptop for only $11,000.
How are they still a company?
4:3 monitor (Score:2)