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System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

forbes.com

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Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#31

Post by markphip »

basilgohar wrote: post #19

I love the concept of System76, full stop. What has kept me from seriously considering them, however, is the absence of AMD-powered systems from them. I understand the ubiquity of Intel-based hardware, but I don't full get why not even an option of an AMD-based system is available. If they're going to go their own way in terms of hardware design, I would hope that they at least opened a line of dialog with AMD to exp…

They support Ryzen with their Thelio desktops so ... maybe. That said I recently wanted to get a Ryzen laptop and could not find one that seemed worth buying. I am not sure if AMD really offers a truly competitive laptop chip yet. I wound up building a custom desktop with a 3700x and am running Pop_OS on it. Like it so far ... just cannot travel with it. Would definitely be interested in a laptop, was about to buy the Galaga but decided to build a desktop because I wanted to try the AMD processor.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#32

Post by kick »

xxpor wrote: post #12
kick wrote: post #10

Will they be sticking with x86? They seem like one of the few companies that could get away with releasing a POWER line.

Why POWER over Arm?

ARM isn't libre, POWER is. RISC-V isn't ready yet, and POWER is the only true x86-competitor.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#33

Post by smacktoward »

basilgohar wrote: post #19

I love the concept of System76, full stop. What has kept me from seriously considering them, however, is the absence of AMD-powered systems from them. I understand the ubiquity of Intel-based hardware, but I don't full get why not even an option of an AMD-based system is available. If they're going to go their own way in terms of hardware design, I would hope that they at least opened a line of dialog with AMD to exp…

> I don't full get why not even an option of an AMD-based system is available.

Intel has been mired in an anti-trust lawsuit in the EU for a decade now, on charges that they offer deep discounts to OEMs on the condition that they don't ship products from competitors (read: AMD) in volume. Such a program would put substantial pressure on OEMs to avoid AMD, since they'd still need to ship a large number of Intel-based products, and losing those discounts would mean their Intel-based products would end up substantially more expensive than their competitors'. The only way to get out of the trap would be to ship nothing but AMD-based products, and demand for Intel is still strong enough that doing so would essentially be committing suicide.

All of which would explain why you don't see many AMD-based products from OEMs on the shelves, despite AMD's clear superiority in the latest generation.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#34

Post by floatboth »

cartoonworld wrote: post #22
xxpor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why POWER over Arm?

My impression is that POWER is more suitable for desktop computing. Many people would like access to a non-x86 portable device (with, say, 64gb ECC RAM and great I/O.) I don't know how well the POWER line has progressed since say 2004ish and ARM sure is coming up, but if you intend to use a lot of (fast) I/O and virtualization on your portable workstation laptop it seems to me that POWER would be a great alternative,…

> ARM on the other hand seems to thrive on the other end of the spectrum--low power consumption and inexpensive

Tell that to the Fujitsu people building the A64fx chip. (Which by the way turns out uses HBM for system memory. I was dreaming of AMD doing this!!) Or even just to Marvell/Cavium :)

I mean, it does thrive in low-power applications, but it's by no means tied to them. A lot of companies going for ARM in the datacenter now: Marvell, Ampere, Huawei, NXP, Mellanox… and Amazon!

> I don't know how well the POWER line has progressed since say 2004ish

Well, IBM has been building big, powerful and relatively expensive chips. NXP has been slowly sort of getting off the POWER ISA and embracing ARM more.

> Wouldn't most solutions require that you cram the IO subsystems into the silicon SoC package?

Huh? The whole point of "SoC" is cramming everything onto the one package. It's the most efficient way to do things, and everything from the Raspberry Pi's Broadcrap chip to the biggest AMD EPYC is a SoC. Most desktop systems aren't 100% True™ SoCs as they require a chipset/PCH, but that chipset is very minimal these days.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#35

Post by heavyset_go »

xxpor wrote: post #12
kick wrote: post #10

Will they be sticking with x86? They seem like one of the few companies that could get away with releasing a POWER line.

Why POWER over Arm?

Outside of the server realm, ARM ISAs aren't standardized and require a fork of the Linux kernel to support each individual board configuration. The consumer ARM space is a mess when it comes to Linux support.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#36

Post by newnewpdro »

jagger27 wrote: post #21

I have a feeling the chances of them making a 16:10 or 3:2 laptop are slim to none.

Nothing in the forbes article suggested they'd prioritize anything like that. Talking about wood grains and rounded corners, the priority seems to be more function following form.

I hope I'm wrong, but I don't expect anything resembling modern classic thinkpad replacements from system76 at this point. It's more like hipster machines incorporating wood and leather.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#37

Post by floatboth »

peristeronic wrote: post #17
xxpor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why POWER over Arm?

POWER is now open source and royalty free.

Which is great if you're going to design your own high-performance CPU core, which uhhhh very few organizations in the world are capable of.

If you're a downstream consumer, especially so far downstream that you're just buying a pre-made chip and putting it onto a board like System76 would, the ISA royalty means very little to you.

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#38

Post by curt15 »

Finnucane wrote: post #6
panpanna wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still feel they should've used those resources to improve an existing distro instead of creating their own. Hardware companies trying to write software usually ends in disaster. (Yes Lenovo, I'm looking at you)

>I still feel they should've used those resources to improve an existing distro instead of creating their own Since Pop_Os is derived from Ubuntu, you could argue that this is just what they did.

When bugs get fixed in upstream projects, do they have to first land in Ubuntu and then filter down to Pop_os? Or does Pop_Os point directly at Ubuntu repositories?

Re: System76 Will Start Designing and Building Its Own Linux Laptops in January 2020

#40

Post by davidmurdoch »

nepeckman wrote: post #3

Awesome news. I bought a Darter Pro back in March and the experience has been great. I was a little hesitant at first because I'm not a Linux expert, but their team puts a lot of effort into making sure stuff with Pop_Os "just works." It might not be quite as polished as a macbook, but it's a comparable product at half the price, plus I get to support open source. Thelio looks amazing and I'm excited to see what they…

One of the reasons I didn't get a System76 machine was because of how Pop!_os is branded. Everything about its branding, from the name itself to even the footer background on the website looks like a complete joke to me.

Of course, maybe there is a demographic that is in to this sort of branding, but I bet it's more of a detriment to overall sales than anything.

Is the OS as full of seconds-long bouncy animations and bubble letter finds as the branding and website makes it look? If so, can animations be reduced or disabled?

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