Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

blog.system76.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 330 posts

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#21

Post by noir_lord »

sniglom wrote: post #12
SunShiranui wrote: post #10

It's nice to see this - I'm definitely interested in seeing computers built and designed for Linux. I must say, however, I don't see that need for desktops. Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing.

Well, I have no issues building a desktop, but if somebody asked me about what (modern) components to choose for no driver issues, I wouldn't know. Avoiding issues and getting support could certainly be worth something.

I find that buying 6mths behind just under the state of the art gets you 90% of the performance often for half the cost.

I've been custom building my desktops since the 90's and I can't remember the last time I had an issue with hardware, I think it was a Geforce MX440 so ~2003.

The driver story on desktop hardware for Linux is absolutely great (in my experience) if the hardware has been out 6mths or more or uses a core chipset/device that has.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#22

Post by dagw »

Nullabillity wrote: post #20
aortega wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

Pretty much all laptops work perfectly fine with Linux. The only real reason to look for one with it preinstalled would be to avoid the MS tax.

They may work "perfectly fine", but they rarely work perfectly. There always seems to be some thing that doesn't quite work (function keys, HDMI output, card reader, graphics card switching etc.).

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#23

Post by s_kilk »

SunShiranui wrote: post #10

It's nice to see this - I'm definitely interested in seeing computers built and designed for Linux. I must say, however, I don't see that need for desktops. Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing.

> A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing.

It exists, it's the Thinkpad T-series.

I don't get all this hand-wringing over the need for hypothetical great Linux machines when we have Thinkpads available right now.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#24

Post by d0vs »

artellectual wrote: post #3

Don't be shy to look at what Apple is doing. They got it right! I would be happy to pay premium for an excellent build quality linux laptop.

Apple build overpriced low-end perf laptops with high build quality, I'd rather have performance at a way lower price.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#26

Post by crazy2be »

aortega wrote: post #15
SunShiranui wrote: post #10

It's nice to see this - I'm definitely interested in seeing computers built and designed for Linux. I must say, however, I don't see that need for desktops. Custom desktops are relatively easy to build, even for customers. A well designed linux laptop, with no driver issues, good build quality, that doesn't sacrifice performance for thinness? That's what I'm missing.

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

By perfectly fine, do you mean:

- Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows)

- Battery life is shit (ier than on windows)

- Sleep mode has one of the following problems

* Does not properly suspend (i.e. wakes up immediately when suspending, shuts down instead of suspending)

* Does not properly resume (i.e. kernel crash on resume)

* Sometimes does not properly resume (even more annoying to debug)

* Resumes randomly, when you don't want, often turning your backpack into a forge.

- Hibernate mode doesn't work (at all, your hardware has been blacklisted).

- Plugging in an external monitor occasionally causes everything to crash (but sometimes just compiz).

These are the most annoying problems I have on my Linux laptop. Admittedly, mine is not Thinkpad, but looking at reviews on the latest Thinkpad, at least the battery life issue seems to be ever present. These are pretty much the same problems I've had for the 10 or so years I've been running Linux on laptops. I would have thought they'd been fixed by now. 10 years ago, Windows had a bunch of these problems too, so it was excusable. Now, it's just embarrassing.

I still run Linux on my laptop because I like the dev environment and tools so very very much, but I would pay serious money for hardware that was guaranteed to just work (tm) with Linux, with all of the above solved by the vendor rather than by me. I used to enjoy these little problems, but now they just annoy.

The sleep mode problems are the most annoying to me, the most elusive to solve, and the most impossible to predict from reviews :/

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#27

Post by keymone »

crazy2be wrote: post #19
elnygren wrote: post #6

The problem with this is that you either do something like what Apple does (and receive the hate for it) or then you do "what people want" and get this https://twitter.com/JonyIveParody/status/850350499840888833 AFAIK this whole System 76 blew up because of the disappointment in the newest Macbook Pro. People say they'd wanted bigger battery and more connectors -- however, I'm a bit skeptical if those would be enough…

Fallacy of the excluded middle. They can do something more than Apple (i.e. not just USB-C ports), but less than others. The Apple design doesn't end up being small or light, because to actually use it you need a plethora of connectors. At a minimum, I would expect standard USB, headphone, sd card reader, standard HDMI, mini displayport. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that an HDMI connector adds more…

vga and ethernet on modern laptop is a sin. they are barely younger than 5" floppy disks.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#28

Post by frou_dh »

aarmenaa wrote: post #13
elnygren wrote: post #6

The problem with this is that you either do something like what Apple does (and receive the hate for it) or then you do "what people want" and get this https://twitter.com/JonyIveParody/status/850350499840888833 AFAIK this whole System 76 blew up because of the disappointment in the newest Macbook Pro. People say they'd wanted bigger battery and more connectors -- however, I'm a bit skeptical if those would be enough…

The previous model of the Retina Macbook Pro 15" (the one without the touchbar) had a 99 watt hour battery, which is right at the limit for what they'll allow you to take on a plane. The new one with the touchbar is 76 watt hours. I have a pre-touchbar model and it's more than thin enough. It can be done. To my mind, the question is can a company that doesn't have Apple's resources manufacture on the same level as Ap…

Reminds me of the hassle it was to internationally get hold of a nice replacement battery for a MBP-17 (OWC 103Wh). Lines being drawn at nice round numbers are understandable but can be galling!

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#29

Post by plouc »

crazy2be wrote: post #26
aortega wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all lenovo Thinkpad laptops works perfectly fine with Linux. Source: I have about 5, different models.

By perfectly fine, do you mean: - Wifi is flaky (ier than on windows) - Battery life is shit (ier than on windows) - Sleep mode has one of the following problems * Does not properly suspend (i.e. wakes up immediately when suspending, shuts down instead of suspending) * Does not properly resume (i.e. kernel crash on resume) * Sometimes does not properly resume (even more annoying to debug) * Resumes randomly, when you…

I can only speak about myself of course but running Ubuntu 16.04 on a thinkpad x250 I have absolutely none of the issues you have listed above. Maybe you hear more about people having bad experiences than good ones?

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#30

Post by johnzim »

d0vs wrote: post #24
artellectual wrote: post #3

Don't be shy to look at what Apple is doing. They got it right! I would be happy to pay premium for an excellent build quality linux laptop.

Apple build overpriced low-end perf laptops with high build quality, I'd rather have performance at a way lower price.

Problem is: you're already pretty well catered to I should imagine. That's literally 90% of the OEM Laptop market competition.
Post reply on HN