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

271–280 of 330 posts

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#271

Post by sqeaky »

fusiongyro wrote: post #263
sauerbraten wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So where is the option for an XPS with Linux, any flavor (or even Freedos or no OS) pre-installed? The XPS 13 is available as a developer edition with Ubuntu instead of Windows preinstalled: http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/productdetails/xps-13-93...

This reinforces the parent's point though, because now you have a fifth option with apparently different hardware on a different update schedule with different pricing. How much Linux incompatibility do you suffer from a regular XPS 13 versus a Developer Edition one?

I would have said this if you hadn't, thank you.

To continue with the pit that is Dell BS, why is the "Developer Edition" of this stuck at 4GB of RAM when one of the other tablet-like versions had 8gb. My current machine has 64, my last ultrabook had 16gb, and my father's phone has 6gb (OnePlus 3t).

Why would a phone that costs half as much have an extra 2gb of RAM and twice as much storage? The phone has 128gb internal and we added a 128gb card.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#272

Post by publicfig »

minusSeven wrote: post #259
publicfig wrote: post #193

This seems like an incredibly high bar/expectation to set for themselves, and while I'd love to see them succeed, I don't have a lot of confidence. The fact that they've decided to start out building desktops really solidifies that doubt. I just don't see a world where there is a demographic of people that both know about System76 and want to use a non-standard OS on a desktop computer, but also aren't familiar with…

I wouldn't exactly call ubuntu a non-standard OS.

I meant more as a non-standard OS to buy a computer loaded with.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#273

Post by [deleted] »

minusSeven wrote: post #259
publicfig wrote: post #193

This seems like an incredibly high bar/expectation to set for themselves, and while I'd love to see them succeed, I don't have a lot of confidence. The fact that they've decided to start out building desktops really solidifies that doubt. I just don't see a world where there is a demographic of people that both know about System76 and want to use a non-standard OS on a desktop computer, but also aren't familiar with…

I wouldn't exactly call ubuntu a non-standard OS.

[deleted]

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#274

Post by vladimir-y »

brianwawok wrote: post #256
vladimir-y wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that you wrote about Thinkpads, for example currently Thinkpad X1 Carbon (5 gen) is the best ultrabook on the market (including macbooks pro, yes nowadays macbooks pro are ultrabooks).

Does Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th work well with Linux? Linux is pushing me towards the XPS 13 Also looks like the X1 is capped at 8GB ram? 16 GB is a minimum, and you can easily get on an XPS 13.

> Does Thinkpad X1 Carbon 5th work well with Linux?

It does

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/657ene/linux_work...

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/5vh2by/arch_linux...

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#275

Post by pedrocr »

ac29 wrote: post #201
gamache wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link -- I'm still hanging when unplugging from the dock, but switching to UXA and disabling 3D accel seems to have quieted the glitches down. I did try some newer kernels a few months ago, but then my wifi stopped working. But this should not be necessary when running a flagship LTS desktop Linux on extremely common hardware from two years ago! I expected more.

Linux hardware support often takes years to mature -- for example, the graphics hardware on my Haswell laptop has seen steady improvements despite being years old. I would strongly recommend against using a LTS linux release from around the time your computer was released. Its just going to be too old. Try Ubuntu 17.04, or take the jump and just use Arch. I use Arch on all my work and home machines, without issue. Ma…

>I would strongly recommend against using a LTS linux release from around the time your computer was released. Its just going to be too old. Try Ubuntu 17.04

No point in doing that. Just use the hardware enablement stack. It gets you the 17.04 kernel/X/etc over the LTS base. Best of both worlds.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#276

Post by FireBeyond »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #145

The posts comparing various laptops to the Dell XPS 13 and calling them similarly sized are missing a key point: the XPS 13's lack of bezels. It is a 13" screen, but due to the lack of bezels, it basically fits in an 11" chassis. I think that's an often overlooked detail and one of the pieces of "sexiness" that makes it very difficult to want to switch away from an XPS 13: it's so damn portable. System76 needs to com…

Very true. I've played with both and XPS 9360 and 9560 (the latest 13 and 15"): The 13 is smaller than my rMBP 13 (and size wise is between it and my girlfriend's Macbook). The 15 is only a little bigger than the rMBP 13.

I _love_ the bezel or lack thereof. The only weirdness is that "bottom of screen" webcam, but I barely use it.

And if you get the 9560... wow. 4K display, GTX 1050M, i7 w/ 32GB. I'm very happy.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#277

Post by thaumasiotes »

sacul wrote: post #153
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #145

The posts comparing various laptops to the Dell XPS 13 and calling them similarly sized are missing a key point: the XPS 13's lack of bezels. It is a 13" screen, but due to the lack of bezels, it basically fits in an 11" chassis. I think that's an often overlooked detail and one of the pieces of "sexiness" that makes it very difficult to want to switch away from an XPS 13: it's so damn portable. System76 needs to com…

MBP-quality trackpads and MBP-equivalent battery life. I can't understand why battery life isn't higher on the list of "must haves" for people who want a nice linux laptop.

> I can't understand why battery life isn't higher on the list of "must haves" for people who want a nice linux laptop.

My laptop is plugged in almost 100% of the time. If it needed to be plugged in a full 100% of the time, that would be at most an extremely minor hit to usability. I need a laptop that I can move, not a laptop that I can use while it's being moved.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#278

Post by thaumasiotes »

adamc wrote: post #212
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #145

The posts comparing various laptops to the Dell XPS 13 and calling them similarly sized are missing a key point: the XPS 13's lack of bezels. It is a 13" screen, but due to the lack of bezels, it basically fits in an 11" chassis. I think that's an often overlooked detail and one of the pieces of "sexiness" that makes it very difficult to want to switch away from an XPS 13: it's so damn portable. System76 needs to com…

Actually, what I want is a 17" screen (it's not just the pixels, I need the fonts to be big enough for my aging eyes) that is not crazy heavy.

I don't understand the recent trend of very-high-resolution devices that strongly recommend you not adjust their 250% default scaling.

OK, you have lots and lots of pixels that are too small to see individually or in combination. Put in a cheaper screen with the same functional resolution. Lower price, same quality.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#279

Post by johndotsun »

Lio wrote: post #56
s_kilk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Thinkpads are great but if I buy a Thinkpad T-series laptop I'm forced to buy Windows with it. Also it's not supported by the manufacturer. Thinkpads have great support from the Linux community but Lenovo doesn't officially guarantee its use (I would be happy to hear if I'm wrong on that).

Thinkpads are great if your standards for screen quality are incredibly low. I can't speak for the ones released in the last couple years but seemingly all of the older ones have garbage tier screens. My T430 has a screen that is at best about as good as the screen that came with my 2009 Asus netbook.

Re: System76 is moving product design and manufacturing in house

#280

Post by StillBored »

artursapek wrote: post #143
francis-io wrote: post #48

I hope you guys have lots of success, we really need more options for linux on a laptop. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I really want a 13 inch laptop thats thin/ultrabook format, with low specs and only a HD screen. All I do each day is use a browser and SSH into other machines, I don't need an i5/i7 processor and HiDPI display to do that. My ideal laptop would be an XPS 13 sized laptop, with a 1080p screen,…

I don't know enough about laptops to do it, but I've pondered that someone could probably make good passive income by building a website that takes in a request like this and recommends laptops (like the 8 sibling responses to you are)

The problem here with linux, is that a laptop that works great with linux kernel x.y and distro z, may suddenly break when kernel x.y' comes out. So now you have to get ahead of the distro's and test all your machines for functionality with every upgrade. Sticking to really mainstream hardware here helps a lot, but that still won't keep from breaking when the next rolling update comes out.

Frankly, having used linux on a few different laptops, i'm not really sure how someone who wants everything to always work perfectly and isn't capable of debugging kernel drivers and tossing out patches runs linux. The few times I've seen this situation, it seems people are just putting up with the broken backlight controls, standby that doesn't work, BT drivers that wont pair, etc.. All things i've had to fix on my machines. (the latest being the keyboard hotkey to enable/disable the trackpad needed "tweaking").

Post reply on HN