Station X Linux Machines | Hacker News Reader

Station X Linux Machines

stationx.rocks

189 pointsinfodroid169 comments

Next reseller of the same OEM laptop ordered somewhere in China.

Check the right side of this laptop: https://stationx.rocks/products/spitfire

and compare with Galago pro: https://system76.com/laptops/galago

sides: https://screenshots.firefox.com/0I2YsDmIvbKuYbr3/stationx.ro... and https://d1vhcvzji58n1j.cloudfront.net/assets/products/galp3/...

and I've seen this model at least on two other resellers.

Thank you ! This is gold. People dont notice this easily and upvote this post.

Downvoted because: see siblings.

Seems like they’re dreaming if they expect someone to buy an $1000+ laptop from a company they’ve never heard of.

To some extent, yes. But the demo that I occupy (male, 30s, software developer, linux enthusiast, seeker of high quality hardware that is highly compatible with linux), is desperate and hungry for this.

Yes, to be honest, I'm quite excited by it.

If only they did plain arch linux (just hard drives partitioned sensibly and graphics drivers installed, maybe X installed) and a nice thin 15 inch version...

Actually, I'd rather like purchasing the notebook with an empty disk, then have the supplier maintain a page in the Arch wiki on what drivers I need etc. (These pages already exist for some models, but only as a community effort.)

When you say "just hard drives partitioned sensibly and graphics drivers installed, maybe X installed", I hear "probably wrong bootloader, probably wrong partition layout, probably wrong FS choice" and so on and so on ("wrong" in this particular case meaning "not what I prefer").

After all, Arch is a distribution for tinkerers who want their system their way.

Yes this would be an amazing offering that I don't think I could resist.

You make a very nice point. Even an AUR package that just installs the drivers would be great!

I thought that was IBM think Pads

Don’t forget Dell’s ”Project Sputnik” XPS13 Developer Edition. My sister (!) has been using one since 2015 and it’s rick solid.

Exactly. I've been using a Thinkpad for my Arch build for years and it's stellar. Does IBM need to shit on Apple like that too? Or are these guys straight out of high school?

My XPS 13 9360 was $900. Arch runs like a dream on it.

I spent $1300 on a System76 laptop about 5 years ago and have been extremely satisfied* with it.

* Except for the Nvidia hardware, which never really worked right. I'm using unaccelerated (?) Nouveau drivers as the least bad option.

That's what stood out for me about all the StationX except for the Spitfire: they have nVidia GPUs. Having dicked around with nouveau and nvidia/dkms with various nVidia chips I will never buy anything with closed-source/binary-blob. It's just not worth my time.

>for linux users

>with nvidia graphics

Wow. What were they thinking? I'll have to assume every other decision they made is about as moronic.

You don't get a line of laptops off the ground overnight. AMD/ATI linux drivers not sucking is a fairly recent development. If were making this decision ~5 years ago, Nvidia would be a reasonable choice.

I spent about $1000 on a Sager 6 years ago, and was very happy with it (including the Nvidia hardware; it was tough to get running in Optimus mode, but works well now).

Last year it had a spate of corrupted video output, with red static all over the screen. Went on for about a week, and I bought a new laptop...then the problems with the Sager disappeared. All well. I think it's still the most maintainable laptop that I own.

A reply from System76:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...

Thank you, this is an excellent perspective to have in the conversation and changed my mind.

Riiiight... who knew that Clevo and Sager relied on System 76 to design and develop their systems (/s). It's a good story, but I don't believe it for a minute.

I don't think it says that.

They're saying that System76 works with Clevo and Sager. As in they give them specs and Clevo/Sager get back to them with prototypes. System76 develops firmware for the prototypes across several internal iterations and with some back and forth between them and the manufacturer.

This is a process that would take years, and depending on the contract it is very likely that Clevo/Sager would have all liberty to sell the chassis they developed from the specs System76 gave them.

My first "industry" job back in 1996 was working for Eurocom Laptops in Ottawa, Canada. I think they're still around..

They were/are a Clevo reseller (back then the company was called Kapok), and our leadership and hardware team went to Taiwan for quarterly meetings - along with other territory partners - to have round-table discussions to help the factory decide what to put in upcoming models, and so on..

So I would believe that this is in fact still the process that happens to this day..

The factory (Clevo) focused on sourcing parts and assembling the units, but even back then they leaned pretty heavily on their retail/B2B partners to help them figure out what machines they should be building.

If System76 is moving enough units for them, you can bet they are asking them for input and guidance on what to put in their machines.

So am I right in thinking that System76 are working on firmware and drivers for clevo/sager laptops, but then not committing them upstream? Or are they simply not open sourcing them at all?

..."we put in the effort to file the bugs, track them, write the code, and get it upstreamed."

I just grepped git log on the Linux kernel and there are three commits that even so much as mention system76.

So right now I'm leaning towards reseller and this is a bunch of bull.

The two commits:

https://pastebin.com/raw/2XBD1E9K

> Once that has been determined, designed, and goes into production, we start on firmware.

So you use coreboot. Right? Because if you don't, where is this firmware development going on?

Chassis are definitely similar, but specs do not line up at all. Screen is full HD for these versus 3200x1800 for System76 for example. System76 seems to be cheaper too.

While I think the unbridled hyperbole on the StationX website is absurd, I will say that when it comes to Linux laptops, having all the components work correctly with Linux (and it be stable!) is probably the hard thing to make.

I don't know if these guys do that part well, but if they actually make it work flawlessly (and if their competitors don't do as well), then the cost difference might be worth it.

Frankly, I haven't found any new laptop of any OS to work great all the time. It's like we've moved back in time about 15 years. Everything sucks in some way.

My previous laptop was a custom build, but last time I just did some searches, confirmed that a HP Pavillion works fine (at least this model does) with Ubuntu, and went to my local PC store and picked one up.

It's not like I can just pick up any random model and expect it to work, but the process is a lot better than it used to be.

>I will say that when it comes to Linux laptops, having all the components work correctly with Linux (and it be stable!) is probably the hard thing to make.

Not really that hard in 2017, just go all Intel (CPU/GPU/WiFi/etc), and you're pretty much set.

I just wish I could opt out of the management engine. ;)

I've got an HP that works more reliably and completely under Linux than under Windows 7 (granted, it was shipped with Windows 10). It was a pain to get the proper versions of Intel drivers and Mesa working together for optimal GPU capabilities, though.

The touchpad is stupidly large, and I suppose it took some tweaking to get that working comfortably, too.

So it is like all those Ubuntu-based distributions that have OS in the name, but in the hardware world?

The reason these look similar to System76 is because they are the exact same Clevo chassis. The bezels are awful, but I give credit to System76 and Station X and any other that works to sell and maintain Linux machines.

My next Linux laptop may be from one of these companies if they can work with Clevo to stop making the screen bezels so horrendously large.

Aside:

Station X was the wartime codename for the Bletchley Park facility where (amongst others) Alan Turing worked on breaking German Enigma-enciphered traffic and Tommy Flowers built the Colossus electronic calculator for breaking encrypted teleprinter codes (Geheimscriber).

All the laptops are named after WW2-era fighter planes. The desktop is named after a long-range wartime strategic bomber.

Looks similar to https://system76.com/.

I got the 17" Kudu for work. Honestly, I'm now aware that a 17" screen on a laptop is just too impractically big, but the hardware has been great.

Having a big screen is so nice. The 17” MacBook Pro is the second best computer I ever had, after my current Thinkpad T530. If I had to buy a new computer today (hopefully not, as my Thinkpad is still going strong at five years old), I’d probably go for the P70.

I don’t mind having a big and heavy laptop though. I carry it in a backpack, and a few pounds more or less on my back is pretty insignificant.

Yeah having a 17" laptop is brilliant with the caveat that they're kind of terrible on planes. I'm using a 14" ThinkPad these days and miss the extra real estate, although I've adapted to it over time.

Good point. Now that you mention it, I do remember trying and giving up on using it on a plane. It’s not a big deal for me personally because I get motion sick on planes so I usually just take a couple of Dramamine and sleep through the whole flight.

A 17" laptop is great for working from the couch, and that's what I use it for. It's not so great as an actual portable computer, so I've coupled it with an 11" that I carry with me for meetings etc...

14" is perfect size for me. Not 13", not 15" but 14". I hope it will become easier to find in the future.

I said it before and I will say it again: a 14" display in 4:3 aspect ratio is the best choice for a programmers laptop!

It's tall enough so that you can see a lot of text but narrow enough that the laptop does not get too bulky.

If there will ever be a new 14" machine with a 1400*1050 display I will be first in line to buy it!

>I said it before and I will say it again: a 14" display in 4:3 aspect ratio is the best choice for a programmers laptop!

Interesting. How do you measure the aspect ratio? By actually measuring the height and width of the visible part of the display with a ruler or measuring tape, or via some software utility / command? I have a 14" display laptop, and would like to know the aspect ration, hence asking.

Xdpyinfo, if nothing else?

Will try that, thanks.

Pixels for computers are approximately square, so you can simply derive it from the native resolution of the panel.

[1]: https://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1400%3A1050

Thanks.

I’ve been very happy with my 17” Dell Precision 7710. But I wanted a big screen and a laptop with lots of ports, room for 2 hard drives, etc.

Entroware also resell these laptops - at a better price - https://www.entroware.com/store/laptops

All I want from my next laptop is to be powered via USB-C. I'm sick of dragging around multiple different chargers for my gadgets.

Price-wise they seem quite competitive on paper. I'm curious as to what the build quality & peripherals are like. In my experience the real difference between a regular and top-of-the-line laptop is in the small things.

They're also lacking a 4k laptop, which I would highly recommend to anyone used to working on the road. (or who has to show of work to clients in person).

Price-wise, I got a zenbook for 2/3 the price, with a 3200x1800 screen (instead of 1920x1080), a slower CPU, same RAM, larger SSD, most other details the same. It's a better fit for my needs, and runs Linux perfectly. I agree completely about the screen - a decent HiDPI screen is quite wonderful.

Also, I wouldn't want any of the distribution options they offer to pre-load. And I wouldn't want a pre-loaded OS anyway.

I'm not trying to discourage a worthy goal, but these are some of the issues that this company has to overcome.

Having done the "buy a Windows laptop and load linux on it" thing for many years and many generations, I think I'm done. I have now had a Dell preloaded with Ubuntu and a System76 and I don't think I'll ever go back. The Dell has special drivers tho for backlight and other things, so loading a different distro is a little more work than a System76 is.

Does System76 work on upstreaming these special drivers, or are you just stuck with whatever they slap on the disk if you want all hardware to work?

Yes, they do specifically work on upstreaming the drivers into the Linux kernel.

I found this post from System76 to be really interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...

Why the keyboard layout? End next to up key? Insert above backspace? What's wrong with the classic 2x3 block?

Another issue I have is with the spacing between F keys. Looks like an afterthought to Fn+? keys.

Not to mention there is not a single clear picture of the keyboard on the product page...

https://stationx.rocks/products/manjaro-special-edition-spit...

Regarding "End next to up key", it's the same as on the Carbon X1 which to be honest, is kind of comfortable. I'm using the arrow keys to scroll on pages when reading, and when I want to skip, the keys for that is right next to it.

At pictures I see PgUp/PgDown keys next to up arrow. Dell has it the same way I think. It's a bit different to an End key, but even then, the biggest issue was that it's only the End there. No Home on the other side.

Sorry, I misread "Page Up/Down" in your comment for some reason. End key is a bit more mysterious and that the is no Home is also weird.

Product customization screen has multiple keyboard layouts; "USA English" is not the default, and probably not what's in the shots (though I'm not sure where you can see what it does look like)...

I didn't mean layout in that sense, rather how keys are laid out.

Also the slight irony of “We create drop-dead gorgeous machines - designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux” next to a photo of a machine with a Windows key.

Gnome 3 for example uses it by default.

Yes, but it doesn't need to have the windows logo printed on it

It doesn't?

No. The rest of the photos have the brand logo on them, e.g. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2083/3225/products/REVISED...

The way to attract Linux users is to tempt them away from their Thinkpads. The way to do that is to offer a laptop with a trackpoint, this little red dot:

https://www.google.com/search?q=trackpoint&tbm=isch

Never understood the appeal of this thing.. tried it once to move the mouse and it was just so slow and awkward.. hardly seemed to work at all.. why do people like this? I really don’t get it myself.. is it for something besides moving the mouse? The thing seems pretty bad for that purpose.. maybe to move he mouse in small increments? Would love an explanation because I absolutely don’t get it myself.. pls help!

Did you try it on an actual thinkpad? I have a dell with a trackpoint and it's nowhere near as accurate.

The appeal is that your fingers don't ever need to leave the homerow and also working from your lap on a bus for example is much easier since your hand doesn't have room to move to get to the trackpad

Agreed. Used to have an IBM Thinkpad with a trackpoint and loved it. Then I got first a Dell and later an HP laptop with trackpoints and could never get used to either of them. They just didn't work anywhere near as well as my old Thinkpad. I cannot really articulate the difference, but it was massive.

I think its because on Thinkpads, the trackpad is rather terrible, so you are forced to use the trackpoint if you want quick, trouble-free movement without a mouse. On the macbook, the trackpad is gorgeously smooth, you don't need to leave the homerow in order to move the cursor - can do any movement with either thumb.

I think people who type "properly" understand it... but even when I try to do that[0], IME, it's just less hassle to use a well-designed trackpad.

[0] It kills my wrists on pretty much any laptop that's placed in a reasonable position with respect to my eyeline. It's a bit easier on a well-designed keyboard but still not something I'd consider natural.

The only laptop I would consider upgrading to from my Thinkpad X220 would either be a modern Thinkpad x270 (just for a hardware upgrade because I like the form factor) or to something that provides a similar keyboard, docking, and modern-ish hardware.

Most of my work happens over SSH, my laptop is currently fast enough for Netflix, email, and web browsing. I'm capped at 2 1920x1080 monitors but this is livable.

I think if someone took the old X220 generation Thinkpads, upgraded the internals, and kept the keyboard and docking that they would sell like hotcakes.

Somebody _is_ kind of doing that: https://geoff.greer.fm/2017/07/16/thinkpad-x62/ . They also mod x220s but the mod is more invasive since they require a different screen bezel.

I recently got an x62 and it's great, although you must put some effort into making linux work smoothly on it and making the screen brighter. But all in all I am extremely happy with it.

Where do you go about buying this?

I dislike the website. The reasons are:

1. "Beautiful machines" is the first point being made. This is superficial.

2. "All distros welcome". Turns out that installing a distro is the least of my concerns when it comes to a laptop.

3. The first thing you notice is this video with the multiethnic group of people from which one of them is at the front as well as happier/dancing. This is inconsistent and weird. What is the message being communicated with this? How is it relevant? Sell me a goddamn laptop instead. Put a picture of a laptop or something.

In order to be constructive, what I would rather emphasize is: laptops are hardware. The intended audience here are tech enthusiasts. I would rather speak about hardware specs, or something distinctive about the hardware, compatibility, the ergonomics... post a benchmark. Something that is actually better than "beautiful laptops" and a awkward video. This is common sense.

This is how a system is sold: https://www.apple.com/imac-pro/ . Note: I do not own one and I am not affiliated with that company, just making a point.

Then... just a reminder: most laptops are potentially a Linux laptop.

> Turns out that installing a distro is the least of my concerns when it comes to a laptop.

Man, how times have changed. Linux working half-decently on a laptop used to be the holy grail of opensource fans. Nowadays, thanks to Ubuntu and friends, chances are that most of it will just work, regardless of hardware. This is a massive achievement and it's not really as promoted as it should be.

Well, true. It can be challenging to install some distros, especially if the default configuration doesn't give you a working network interface. And while it can be solved, it's by no means a desirable first Linux experience.

> We create drop-dead gorgeous machines - designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

Only linux? Seems like a weird limitation... or am I understanding this wrong?

I think they mean "only designed and customized for Linux", not that it can't run other stuff. Essentially the same as 99% of laptops, except for Linux instead of Windows :)

Although as someone mentioned below, they are rebranded Clevo machines, and really were designed to run Windows first. Station X is just offering a guarantee that they will run Linux properly.

Be reminded that by looking at the outside you do not know what's inside.

Agreed. I think it means, "We only test and install Linux, and don't bother with other distros. Also only pick hardware that has linux support without considering whether other OSes support that hardware"

Don't want to sound rude but: "created"? Or just resold whatever Compal/Clevo are building with hand picked some components like WiFi card that happen to have drivers in Linux kernel?

"just resold whatever Compal/Clevo are building with hand picked some components like WiFi card that happen to have drivers in Linux kernel"

Ooohh...bingo :)

> "Or just resold whatever Compal/Clevo are building"

Indeed, the Windows logo on the Super key in all but the "Manjaro Special Edition" confirms that. At least System76 takes the time and effort to customize the keyboard.

I don't blame them for wanting to cater to the vastly underserved Linux enthusiast market, but they haven't impressed me.

One more thing:

> designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

But super key still have Windows logo.

In the options I selected Ubuntu logo.

They can change that, they even engrave your distro's logo.

You can customize the sticker on the super key during checkout, choosing from many distro logos or other Linux related logos. Windows is also an option.

It's cheap, it's sticker! How company can sell "laptops and all-in-one powerhouses meticulously crafted to run Linux." and put a sticker on one of the keys because they couldn't "meticulously" prepare keyboard designed for Linux users.

> No Windows or Mac here, folks

So they are lying on their main page. Great!

Yeah, I hear you... Their design is far from "drop-dead gorgeous" for my taste.

I was just pointing out that you're not really tied to Windows.

>and only linux

Because, screw bsd users.

Then there's the model that's branded "for manjaro", a distribution that almost nobody cares about and that every arch user will sneer at.

They could get a clue. At least try to understand the target market.

> We are Linux advocates who believe in providing you the most free and open devices to create your most important work.

Does that mean they have a disabled/cleaned ME like the purism machines? Or what does "free and open" mean in this case?

To quote Fawlty Towers, "Don't mention the graphics card!"

GPUs seem to be the only remaining issue with OEM Linux laptops. I was almost ready to buy a Purism Librem last year after the sad MBP announcements, but I got cold feet because of that. I wish someone had the money to pay one of these companies to polish linux drivers and ship some decent GPUs.

Well most Radeon cards work great with open source drivers, there is still the issue of closed source firmware however. But at least now the kernel drivers (kms, drm) are open source, the GL drivers (mesa) are open as well for Radeon. For some Radeon cards they perform better using the open source drivers than they do with the closed source ones.

On the "free and open" front, their "B-29 Superfortress" linux desktop only has options for Nvidia graphics cards. Would have been nice to see some AMD options in support for their open source work.

The "free and open" part is lying for the sake of PR.

Are they intentionally trying to optimize bezel real estate? Like for people who add a lot of post-its to the side of their screens?

If Linux people are known for anything it's their love of post-it notes on the side of their screen /s. But yeah. If I wanted a "gorgeous Linux laptop" I would buy a Dell XPS 13". Dell actually puts some work into making their own hardware and they upstream drivers and other stuff so the XPS actually works pretty well with Linux.

I actually have a xps13 dual booting Ubuntu and Windows. It's gorgeous, fast and portable. The only thing that sucks is the track pad, but I mainly just dock it anyway so it doesn't annoy me too often.

Just buy and powerwash a Chromebook.

Seriously I wonder why not this? I understand if you're looking for a portable workstation or something of that performance why not... but for an ultra-portable little dev machine. And it would be far cheaper, too, no?

(I've liked what System76 has done, but even then I probably wouldn't spring for the Galago as opposed cheaper Chromebook unless I were jumping up to one of their other workhorses)

> Gorgeous Linux laptops

First thing I noticed on these pictures, was the ugly sticker left side underneath the keyboard. Sorry, but such trifles got nothing to do with gorgeous. Also, black camera frame, huge display bezel, and non-centered touchpads are, imho, a nogo if you wanna call it gorgeous.

I prefer the touchpad not to be in centre. It does not make any sense. It's like putting your mouse in the middle of your desk, instead of the right or left where you can actually hold it properly.

I had been planning to replace my faithful 5yr old Samsung Ultrabook with a Dell XPS. But I like the idea of buying from a UK supplier based in Bletchley Park and using a lot of WWII branding. I do need a win32 dev env, but I guess I could run Windows inside a VM.

> using a lot of WWII branding

Yeah tbh that's the only thing that puts me off a bit. War is war, I'd rather not glorify it; it might be a necessary evil on occasions, but I'd rather not be reminded of that every day. Then again, I'm not British.

Still, I would expect the subset of potential buyers for geeky machines not to massively overlap the nationalistic subset of the British population, so to me it looks like poor marketing overall.

There is so much cultural stuff that appeared because of war. Do you avoid those things as well?

"Cultural stuff" I can choose to consume at will. The tools I use every day for my work, that's another matter.

It's entirely possible to be fond of the branding and still not glorify war

Being British I love the branding, but I am something of a WWII obsessive. WWII, the Battle of Britain, "the few", fight them on the beaches etc is a huge part of national identity in the UK. But it seems to me that WWII flavoured branding could be a huge marketing mistake in the EU territories Station X is targeting: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Well, Spitfire, I can understand. But Lancaster? Technically awesome as the Lancaster was, I wonder what kind of brand marketing genius wants to their product associated with the firebombing of civilians [1]. Or in the words of Churchill himself, "a serious blotch on the conduct of the Allies in the war".

[1] Not to disparage the dedication to duty, bravery, and sacrifice of the aircrews, roughly 50% of which never made it back. Competing with the German U-boat service for the service with the highest KIA rate, FWIW.

I agree, the branding is off putting. Let's leave nationalism out of computing.

"By Linux nerds for Linux nerds." and all the people in the picture are guys with glasses a couple of man from different nationalities. Thanks for the stereotype. Women in tech are going to be very proud of this image.

I'm sorry (and I'm so called woman in tech, if any), but shouldn't girls worry about WomenInTech trend?

If everyone makes you a way because you're a Woman, not a good engineer - is there anything good about this?

Who cares about the picture, if these guys make nice laptops?

I'm not a woman but I think you're misunderstanding. It's about fair representation, not special treatment because you're a woman. Assuming that's a promo video, it's under-represented.

The under-represented party in that video is the hardware.

Humans (regardless of whether they are male, female or other) are over-represented in that video and they add no useful information to prospective buyers.

I care because they are promoting an image that is not true. And you as a woman (I am not) should care about it too. Because the picture means that only men, regardless their nationality, can be linux nerds. I would be offended if I were a girl who is a linux nerd. The same way they added 4 nationalities, they could have added a woman. Because they didn't choose 4 random guys and get 4 different nationalities by chance.

When everything a person sees says "people who are part of this community are men", it's driving women away from that community. When women visit my hackspace, they tend not to come back once they realise I'm the only other woman there and the culture is reasonably masculine. It sucks to feel like you don't belong.

Ensuring that as many interested people as possible feel like they belong should be something that any subset of society thinks about, especially when publishing materials aimed at a broad audience.

The issue, for the record, isn't a single material. If there wasn't a problem in the first place, there'd be nothing to criticise here, except for it feeling a bit out of place - the fact that not many people feel a bit odd about a marketing material targeted towards "Linux nerds" that only features men is a small piece evidence for said problem.

As a woman in tech (20+ years), I can say this definitely rankled with me. 2005 called and wants its metrosexual dudebro brogrammer stock photographs back.

Is there anyone here who's actually used one of these?

I read that they use the same suppliers that are used by US-based System76 and other Linux-focused vendors, so no surprises there.

There is a video review from Quidsup up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhpPsktOZFw

No, but I can tell they're just rebranded Clevo builds.

These machines have very decent specs and are easy to service and upgrade, but at the cost a of very low quality build with regards to the laptop case itself.

There are plenty of other brands that offer the same kind of Clevo laptops with Linux, the best known of which is system76.

Basically, these are just the same Clevo machines you can buy with any Clevo reseller, but with Linux installed for marketing differentiation, and a significant mark up in pricing.

I thought your statement was rather aggressive (you basically say that the linux brand is used to bump the price), until I saw this :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clevo

I hope the people from System76 or StationX will be able to show that their added value is a little more than installing some linux image... (I was considering buying one of those, but your statement makes me hesitate)

Sure, but implied in their Linux branding of the laptops is a promise of testing their configurations with Linux. So you are paying for a promise that the system will be compatible with Linux, I suppose.

If these things interest you, you should definitely take a look at other Clevo resellers in your country, and compare the pricing to help you decide whether the added value of this promise is worth the increased retail price.

Definitely check out System76's response to your question of showing their added value. I totally agreed with you, and that post turned me around.

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/5umefi/system76_refr...

That's interesting, I'd not seen this comment before.

So the good thing about System76 is that they can gather up the Linux users buying their products, and use the volume of those combined sales to give Linux users a voice with upstream manufacturers like Sager and Clevo.

I think it is probably:

* a guarantee, and support for running Linux * UK-based customer support, rather than ROC/Taiwan-based * maybe component selection that avoids certain hardware with bad drivers?

Any idea what ODM Purism <puri.sm> uses for their components? This is exactly the sort of thing I find interesting.

Sadly, no. I've tried to find out but couldn't find any clues.

As far as I can tell, they're using their own custom built casing. It definitely looks much better built than the Clevo machines, but I've not yet have been to get my hands on one and take a closer look.

As a system76 gazelle owner I agree with this. Nice display, great job on the drivers and system software, horrible build quality on the case, terrible keyboard, terrible fit around the trackpad, worst trackpad buttons I've ever seen. I've been developing on this for over a year and it's been ok, but the quality isn't anywhere near what you should be getting for the price point.

> designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

So no BSD then?

I interpret that to mean, "We only focus on whether this thing works well with Linux." So BSD may work fine, but YMMV.

"Battery life: up to 5 hours".

Not a MacBook Pro killer at all.

I read that and came to say the same. Not sure if this is because of Linux power management or the hardware itself. Either way I don't consider any laptop with "up to 5 hours" battery life an option anymore. I keep laptops longer and batteries degrade over the years.

Any company trying to make it's name in the Linux market has to field stuff at lower pricepoints. I can buy a perfectly good Acer netbook for 300$ and install Ubuntu in a matter of minutes. If you cannot do small and cheap, the thing that Linux can do better than anyone else, you aren't going to win over many people.

The margins in the low end PC laptop market are so narrow that it's a crazy place to aim for if you're a small player.

But people looking to test out a new company/os want cheap. They will come back later once confidant. Smaller/cheaper generally also means greater battery life.

But will they come back looking for something more expensive?

I'm not sure there's any money aiming for the market that buys cheap. On the other hand enthusiast vendors like e.g. PC Specialist in the UK have survived for many years selling PC's in the price segment these guys are going after, because frankly for some of the models you could survive as a small company on a few dozen a month, while you might have to sell 10x-20x as many units to make similar margins to cover salaries and sales costs for lower priced units.

Anyone knows what the real battery life does on these because 5 hours is not very good and usually a seller is optimistic.

Love the video ad but its pretty hard for me to consider buying one of these. I want on site repair/replacement... not 'user serviceable' try to fix it yourself... my last three HP laptops were all over $2500 and all needed on-site service at some point.

If any of you visit eastern europe or countries where pirating a copy of windows is common practice, you can get linux laptops everywhere, sometimes the same machine is discounted because it's a display unit with freeDOS (who'd buy a machine you can't test)

"All distros covered " = No distro really fully covered.

The world doesn't need another random laptop which you might be able to install Linux on. What's needed is a Linux laptop that just works(tm) - all the time, every time, with the most common peripherals.

It says "MacBook Pro killer". Is there an option to have a high-resolution screen (e.g. 2880 x 1800, like Retina)? All I found was Full HD IPS 1920 x 1080.

A “MacBook Pro killer”... with a 1920x1080 display. Right.

The marketing feels so try-hard. Do you need to shit on Macbook because there's nothing to sell otherwise? So passive aggressive.

> designed and customised to run Linux - and only Linux.

So have they blocked installation of windows in some manner, a la Chromebook?

I find it funny how a copy of a Mac is necessarily beautiful (and so original)!

Anyway, no track point so I'll just skip!

Screen bezel :(

Or get a Xiaomi Mi Air and get a better laptop for less money. Only downside is the low maximum RAM.

Is there an option to have a '\' key where that weird shaped Enter key is?

How are these compared to Purism?

what i'd like is a portable "mainframe" you can remote into from older (or cheaper) machines, something you can still in a backpack along with a chromebook.

I had to close within seconds of dealing with this web design, to keep my sanity.

Adding that to the pushing of one distribution over the others... way to utterly misunderstand your target market.

I doubt they'll be selling many. Morons, the bunch of them.

is 8gb of ram really enough these days? I know for my development and multitasking I'd feel underpowered with 16gb, but 16 is at least a decent baseline.

Ugh, another wannabe macbook. If I want a mac, I'll just buy one. Please give me a good quality linux laptop that isn't trying to be a macbook.

> Or are we dealing with a an Arch or Gentoo stalwart? Regardless, our machines have you covered.

Might be worth fixing your typo :-)

It seems quite good but I'm very intolerant of 16:9 screens. It's a no-go for me..

Agreed, I will take the wide-screen ratio god intended (16:10) any day of the week over 16:9.

Intel backdoor included.

It starts to be wrong with Linux.

The animation made me cringe.

I don't understand who they are targeting with it

I don't think they understand it either.

there are meme geeks out there

Wow, so much dudebro. That animated gif is killing me.

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