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posted by on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the must-be-pricey dept.

News for System 76 fans:

We're about to build the Model S of computers. Something so brilliant and beautiful that reviewers will have to add an 11 to their scores. Being that we're System76 and we do things the System76 way, our design principles are polar opposite of the rest of the industry.

  • Represent the character of our company

Our company is open, warm, friendly, and high-quality. Our designs reflect these characteristics.

  • Represent the Open Source community

Our CAD work will be Open Source and our design will pay tribute to computer science.

  • Easy to work on and expand.

At every step along the way we ask, "How does this decision affect serviceability". Open it, change it, expand it. Our product will be flexible.

  • Efficient to manufacture

[...] We're starting with desktops. There's a lot to learn and the form factor is easiest to work with. Both design and CAD work are well along their way. We're prototyping with acrylic and moving to metal soon. Our first in-house designed and manufactured desktops will ship next year. Laptops are more complex and will follow much later.

It's going to take some years, but by the end of phase three, we'll be able to create anything. We'll apply our unique computers for creators perspective to every aspect of our products.

Also at: https://liliputing.com/2017/04/linux-pc-builder-system76-plans-design-manufacture-hardware.html


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by driven on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:07AM (11 children)

    by driven (6295) on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:07AM (#500469)

    I don't need a new laptop yet, but I've had system76 at the top of my list to consider buying from. This is great news, even if it doesn't include laptops yet. We definitely need more free/open choices out there.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:19AM (3 children)

    by vux984 (5045) on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:19AM (#500476)

    Meh, desktop cases are kind of a generic commodity at this stage and have been for years. I don't see a lot of value in designing and fabricating another one. Antec and others already make lots of excellently designed desktop cases, they are standards compliant and you can put any hardware you like in them. So I can't really see selecting System76 for the desktop case unless it is truly special in some way that i can't really imagine... and simultaneously not over-priced.

    An open source laptop design on the other hand tweaks my interest since there are numerous compromises that have to be made there between modularity, size, and style. And as I understand it system76 is basically selling rebadged laptops (is this correct?) so they are somewhat limited in terms of just what component combinations are inside them.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:21AM (2 children)

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:21AM (#500515) Journal

      But is it really hard to find a laptop to run Linux on these days? Even someone like me who can't stand Linux (its not the OS, its the shitty attitude the devs have and the insane desire to constantly reinvent the wheel and change just enough shit to make distros incompatible with each other) will give credit where credit is due and from what I've seen on your average Intel i3 or AMD APU laptop? You just plug in the flash, install the OS and it "just works". Even the dreaded Broadcom wireless from what I've been told runs perfectly in the latest Ubuntu and as a nice bonus you have a Windows key you can use for a VM if you run into any software you need that doesn't run on Linux.

      so unless you just really hate having that windows key and are willing to pay a premium to lose it i just don't see the point, its not 2004 when finding hardware Linux would run on is a PITA anymore.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:50AM

        by stormwyrm (717) on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:50AM (#500539) Journal
        Some of us don’t want to pay Microsoft one red cent for any of their misbegotten software. Sure, I could buy a laptop with Windows 10 preinstalled and pave it over with Linux Mint or whatever, but if I did that I’d still have paid Microsoft for Windows 10. I’d pay a reasonable premium for hardware that works perfectly with Linux and not have to work at getting a refund for a Windows 10 license that I don’t want and will never, ever use. I couldn’t give a damn about the “Windows key”. I’ve been planning to buy a System76 laptop for a while and will do so as soon as it’s financially viable.
        --
        Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @07:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @07:54PM (#500856)

        the shitty attitude [they] have and the insane desire to constantly reinvent the wheel and change just enough shit to make [things] incompatible

        Who were you talking about again?
        Oh, I see: Linux distro developers.
        Had me thinking you might be talking about Redmond.

        .
        ...and I'm happy to see that System76 (correctly written as one word) has improved its attitude.

        In 2009, Linux advocate Ken Starks contacted them and they couldn't be bothered with that "Linux community" stuff.
        Ken characterized System76 as rude. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [blogspot.com]
        (Ken found ZaReason to be very congenial and recommended them to others.)

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:59AM

    by dyingtolive (952) on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:59AM (#500490)

    Have you actually seen one of these in person? I've been interested since they came out, but I have a strong aversion to buying a laptop I can't physically test the keyboard/trackpad of first.

    As expected, they're not in stores anywhere I can find, but I was a little surprised to see they were not even at Microcenter.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by darkpixel on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:59AM (5 children)

    by darkpixel (4281) on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:59AM (#500491)

    I bought a System 76 laptop just under 5 years ago. The thing has been rock-solid. It was a bit spendy, but I went top-of-the-line at the time because I didn't want to have to replace it any time soon. Dual quad-core. 2.6 I think. 32 GB RAM and dual 128 MB SSDs. Unfortunately my SSDs are mirrored and nearly maxed out. I'm going to buy two after-market 256 GB drives next week and swap them in.

    Hopefully this will last me until their new line of laptops comes out and they are proven stable. I'll definitely buy from them again.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:03AM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:03AM (#500493)

      I'm typing this on a System76 laptop I picked up a few years ago. It works just fine hardware-wise. The biggest annoyance is that if you suspend-resume, it doesn't do a good job of picking up the Wifi connections, so I generally do a full shutdown instead.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 1) by darkpixel on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:54PM

        by darkpixel (4281) on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:54PM (#500679)

        Hmm....I never put my laptop to sleep. I needed a powerful workstation that was semi-portable at first, but after a few months I stopped having to move it around. I'm running Mint on it, and I don't recall ever sleeping the darn thing. Mainly because I run a few VMs on it that serve stuff to the internet a few times a night. And it's hard-wired.

        I basically used the wireless for about 4 months and than almost never again.

        One weird issue I ran into in the very beginning was that I could unplug the ethernet interface and plug it back in and it would fail to detect a link. I would have to 'ip link set down dev eth0; ip link set up dev eth0'. I think it was a kernel bug as the problem hasn't recurred in years.

    • (Score: 2) by driven on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:43PM (2 children)

      by driven (6295) on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:43PM (#500672)

      Did you have any trouble with wireless waking up after sleep like someone else commented? That would be a deal-breaker for me.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by darkpixel on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:49PM

        by darkpixel (4281) on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:49PM (#500676)

        That's one area I never deal with. I bought the laptop to take to work because work wouldn't provide a powerful enough machine to do my job. I would shut it down, pack it up, and go to work--never put it to sleep. After about 4 months of dragging it between work and home, I showed my boss what I was doing. He was impressed. And i told him I would no longer be lugging my $2,500 personal laptop to the office and he'd have to get me a decent machine. Problem solved. My laptop has been plugged in at home for the last 4.3 years. It never sleeps. ;)

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:25PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:25PM (#500805) Journal

        I bought the Bonobo Extreme Bonx8 model about two years back, and I've never had an issue with the wifi coming back after putting it to sleep.

        I *did* have some issues with it locking up when coming out of sleep, but that only started after a software update more than a year after I bought the thing so it's certainly not a hardware issue. Not sure what it is exactly because I haven't bothered to look into it any, but it's not the hardware (I use Arch so I figure it'll be fixed in a couple updates...at which point something *else* will break...)