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System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

blog.system76.com

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Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#21

Post by wmf »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #12
nwah1 wrote: post #2

I admire the efforts to get coreboot support, and love their open hardware initiatives, but I don't understand why everyone has NIH syndrome. There was no need for them to create their own distro. That is a huge expense just to reinvent a wheel that has already been reinvented ten thousand times. And in the end most of their users will probably just load up the one they use already.

I don't think it's unusual that a hardware vendor would want to provide an OS that is absolutely guaranteed to work on the hardware they're selling--that's just protecting your customers. Ideally it shouldn't even be necessary if all of your components have well-supported drivers, but this is Linux we're talking about--only three years ago I had to replace the default wireless card in my Dell XPS 13 because the broad…

They could have gotten Ubuntu certified on their computers like Dell does, although they'd probably have to pay Canonical.

Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#22

Post by currymj »

nwah1 wrote: post #2

I admire the efforts to get coreboot support, and love their open hardware initiatives, but I don't understand why everyone has NIH syndrome. There was no need for them to create their own distro. That is a huge expense just to reinvent a wheel that has already been reinvented ten thousand times. And in the end most of their users will probably just load up the one they use already.

I ended up having the opposite experience; I went and installed Pop on my non-System76 workstation.

It is basically just Ubuntu, with a custom desktop environment (that is actually perfectly fine although optional), but more importantly, ppas for up-to-date NVIDIA drivers and CUDA.

It's sort of like if a machine learning person installed Ubuntu on their workstation, did all the configuration work to get it working with their GPUs, and then turned that into a distro.

Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#23

Post by akvadrako »

bgorman wrote: post #16

If System76 had all their laptops come with Coreboot I would strongly consider buying from them next time I refresh my laptop.

Coreboot is just not that relevant anymore. There is no clear line between hardware and software, so CPUs contain lots of totally closed software and of course totally closed hardware. That means you aren't really gaining much by moving that line 1% closer to total freedom, but it takes lots of effort.

Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#25

Post by Lowkeyloki »

cs702 wrote: post #8
nwah1 wrote: post #2

I admire the efforts to get coreboot support, and love their open hardware initiatives, but I don't understand why everyone has NIH syndrome. There was no need for them to create their own distro. That is a huge expense just to reinvent a wheel that has already been reinvented ten thousand times. And in the end most of their users will probably just load up the one they use already.

> but I don't understand why everyone has NIH syndrome. Many free/open-source advocates have been complaining about NIH syndrome for years and years and years... to no avail. Consider, for example, the situation with window managers and desktop environments. Off the top of my head, we have Gnome, KDE, Unity, XFCE, Openbox, dwm, Gala, KWin, Fluxbox, Enlightenment, JWM, and Ratpoison -- to name only 12 of the remarkabl…

I actually enjoy having choices. That's part of why systemd's feature creep to swallow everything bothers me. It represents choice being taken away from the administrator of the system.

Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#27

Post by 4thaccount »

dotnetcorenoob wrote: post #24

Do people actually buy laptop/desktop from system76? I tried to price a laptop from them before and it was quite expensive compare to main stream vendors like Dell. Its cheaper just buy a OEM laptop and slap ubuntu on it.

Yes. System76 is definitely expensive, but their customer service is the best I've seen for any product period. They have a super snappy site with real people you can talk to in Denver and ask off the wall questions about the hardware and OS. To some, having that kind of support is worth a markup rather than trolling through Ubuntu forums and asking StackExchange answers. My last few Linux machines were all repurposed Windows computers though. It's also nice to help support Linux on desktop this way.

Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#28

Post by 4thaccount »

currymj wrote: post #22
nwah1 wrote: post #2

I admire the efforts to get coreboot support, and love their open hardware initiatives, but I don't understand why everyone has NIH syndrome. There was no need for them to create their own distro. That is a huge expense just to reinvent a wheel that has already been reinvented ten thousand times. And in the end most of their users will probably just load up the one they use already.

I ended up having the opposite experience; I went and installed Pop on my non-System76 workstation. It is basically just Ubuntu, with a custom desktop environment (that is actually perfectly fine although optional), but more importantly, ppas for up-to-date NVIDIA drivers and CUDA. It's sort of like if a machine learning person installed Ubuntu on their workstation, did all the configuration work to get it working wi…

Also it has a bunch of common desktop shortcuts installed and canonical metrics all disabled...and disk encryption.

Re: System76 News: Coreboot and Linux Advances

#30

Post by qaq »

dotnetcorenoob wrote: post #24

Do people actually buy laptop/desktop from system76? I tried to price a laptop from them before and it was quite expensive compare to main stream vendors like Dell. Its cheaper just buy a OEM laptop and slap ubuntu on it.

I'd buy one but the design is too ugly :(
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