System76 and LVFS
blog.system76.com
blog.system76.com
Three years ago I bought an Dell XPS 15. After a few month the touchscreen was broken (did not respond to any input). As I didn't really need it, it took me a few weeks before I contacted Dell. Their support tried to fix the devices remotely for nearly an hour (flashing firmware updates), the touchscreen was still broken. So they send a technician who tried to repair the device in my kitchen. Sadly he didn't have a replacement screen with him, so a few days later another technician came and replaced the screen.
Afterwards the touchscreen worked again. But a few weeks later the Screen started to flicker occasionally. At first I wasn't sure if it was related to the battery level or some software error, as it just happen from time to time and I wasn't using the device that often anyway. But after searching online for the issue and having used the laptop with Windows and Linux for months I am confident that it is another hardware malfunction. Sadly the warranty is long time over.
I liked the effort the support put into fixing the device, but I am a little disappointed to have had so many hardware issues for a device with such a high price. And while I had very few driver issues, the overall quality of the product didn't convince me to recommend it :-/
I've also had a lot of cooling and throttling issues. I use to really like Dells and have had other really good Dell laptops. Maybe I just got a bad release and I probably shouldn't swear them off, but I'm probably going to avoid them for a while.
Basically it starts civilly about finding the one best way to do something. They agree to disagree.
Then there 2 standards...Then 4, then 8 all not having the effort exerted to make each solution great.
Then one party writes something like "don't buy this it not free/ doesn't do this".
And in the end 99+% of people can't be bothered with the arguments and end up running Mac/Windows laptops, harming the open source adoption goals of everyone who was arguing before.
I still own redhat stock. Corporations love having a point of contact when things go wrong and will pay for that.
Dozens of projects have gone this way and the open source community still exists
It’s almost as if the notion of one size fits all is a utilitarian idea to simplify production of physical goods
We need to maybe look at why we keep trynna force that on more ephemeral ideas
I’m not obliged to speak English any one why. Why bother with making sure everyone runs the same code or manages only one or two key projects collectively?
Cause Big Corp? Meh.
Most distros STILL ship ext4 despite there being better options.
Why should your interop concerns influence choices I need to make for my project?
Shared utilitarian solutions to basic human problems like food, healthcare, shelter, Linux kernel I get
Why do I need to adopt anyone else’s “code slang” for my otherwise specific needs? If ext4 works who are you to tell me to use something you think is “better”?
Software and operating systems are a feedback loop. The more software for a OS the more people use that OS which drives more and better software. As a Mac user in the 90s we suffered from a lack quality software and almost the demise of that platform.
It’s always the year of the Linux desktop, but it can’t seem to displace windows despite being cheaper.. I want great options for computers with Linux pre installed.
But it’s hard sell. Which disto?
Which desktop to use? Gnome, kde.... filesystem? Want to install something non standard? Better hope that they build the software with the same libraries and the same distribution.
Choice is great, but after reading about the linux desktop in another post, people have their favorites, but it seems like there is a lot of work to be done polishing them. With limited developers volunteering we end up with 10ish ok options instead of 2 or 3 great ones.
You want as many people using your platform to keep it healthy and strong.
The main gripes with it are that it's 'bloated' (in Linux terms, yes, but it's way lighter than Windows/MacOS), or that it encourages the installation of proprietary binaries to make things work (also way less than Windows/MacOS).
There are no alternatives to AFUEFI?
There is no other way to interpret this email other than LVFS won’t work well for us. UpdateCapsule is not supported by over a decade of machines in the field and could not be added without a firmware update.The only alternative is to reverse engineer the SPI flashing method. We have switched to using FPT, the Intel Flash Programming tool, on new models. This means that we need to reverse engineer the SPI update method, which is something the flashrom project has had success in doing for older Intel chipsets.
Yeah, there's not a whole lot there in the docs, but it's PIO SPI that handles most of the flash addressing for you, so it's not the most complex thing in the world to begin with. More "fill the buffer and go" sort of deal.
If fwupd won’t support a capsule-on-disk, I personally volunteer to nudge them. But I bet they already support it or would be very willing to add support.
This. I think the whole "longer lever to move the boulder is to do this in public" is a very very bad trend. Posting stuff like this is inflammatory, on both sides.
Imagine you want to revert firmware for legitimate reasons. As the originator of the firmware, you could revert the source code and have a new build spawn that produces a valid artifact. With our system and with the typical system, this is possible.
Now imagine you are an attacker who wants to release an older firmware version, which potentially contains a vulnerability. You have access to the publishing system, but not the build system or signing key. With our system this is impossible, as consumers will not allow moving backwards to an older build. With the typical system, any signed firmware blob can be released at any time, meaning an older version can be made available without having to rebuild.
Our build system utilizes a firmware signing hardware device connected to the build server over serial with a strict protocol to ensure that leaking the key is not possible, even if the build server is compromised. In addition, the key is destroyed if this firmware signing device loses power (it does have a battery backup, but it disconnects if the case is opened), and we must deploy a new key in that event through software upgrades on client machines.
The problem is that it's not clear what exactly is better out there for Linux enthusiasts who want a MacBook Pro-like experience out of the box. They're the least worst solution on the market as far as I can tell.
How big a group is this? Most enthusiasts like the ceremony of installing and configuring their favorite distros to their likings.
Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by "enthusiast?"
I'm in the category where I use Linux for a living, but I also don't want to spend a week debugging why WiFi keeps dropping at random intervals instead of actually getting my job done.
Edit: looks like the system76 downvote brigade is hitting this discussion.
Uh, no. The purpose of my comment is to point out there's a company that builds and sells Linux laptops that are of higher quality. They've put in a lot of work to support Coreboot, disable ME, and have a working TPM. They are trying to reduce their dependence on non-free software.
It's a coincidence that in this case you 'get what you pay for'.
Tbh, I'm fairly convinced and have been for some time now that someone involved with that group is part of a voting ring on HN.
Those things may not all be perfect, but they do make a big difference.
Redox is not ready for production and I am not hesitant to admit so.
But it's nice to know that I can just phrase all of my statements in the form of a question and then I can never be held accountable for stating them.
You may or may not find it compelling, but I don't see the relevance of Redox.
System76's pitch is that they add value by ironing out all the compatibility issues Linux can have on laptops, so they "just work" the way macOS does on MacBooks and Windows does on ThinkPads and Dell XPSes. But they're maddeningly vague about precisely what compatibility issues they're ironing out, at least in their public-facing marketing materials.
Those make their pitch instead on the quality of their hardware -- a front where they are inevitably doomed to lose to deeper-pocketed OEMs like the ones mentioned above -- and on their coming with a custom flavor of Linux called "Pop!_OS", which as far as I'm concerned is an anti-feature. I don't want to be locked into some hardware vendor's custom Linux ghetto just to get hardware compatibility; I want to run mainstream distros like Ubuntu, Fedora or Debian. You can get a System76 machine with Ubuntu, but if the hardware "just works" with Ubuntu, why muddle the message by trying to get me to convert to a whole new distro? And if it doesn't "just work" with Ubuntu, why offer that option in the first place?
It's all very confusing, and leaves me with the vague feeling that they're talking about just about anything they can talk about other than what specifically they're doing to improve Linux's compatibility with laptop hardware. And that makes me worry that they're just taking generic hardware from some Chinese factory and installing Linux on it.
If that's what I wanted, I could do it myself, you know?
Note that I'm not saying here that they aren't doing important work improving compatibility. What I'm saying is that, if they're doing that work, they're doing a really good job of hiding it from potential customers. Which is mystifying, since that is the one thing their potential customers would actually care about.
You can say they aren't working on the right things - or that they aren't doing enough. All fair - but clearly they aren't just installing Linux on OEM laptops.
And as an outsider to this particular corner of the Linux world, what I've seen following this back-and-forth is a fight between System76 and someone from GNOME who says System76 is making his life more difficult. As someone who uses GNOME on all his machines, that is not the kind of relationship between a hardware vendor and the GNOME project that would encourage me to buy their hardware.
But I'm more upset with the people who say just go buy a Clevo that they OEM. A company spends time and money to bring good Linux support and people want to end run around them to save a few bucks. This is why Linux doesn't have great laptop support - nobody will pay for it.
Disclaimer: typing this on my work machine, which happens to be a System76 laptop. Mine came with Ubuntu, and a special System76 PPA for what appears to be firmware reasons.
Also, with a higher-end config I don't recall the Sager/Clevo options I saw being much cheaper, if at all. The comparable ThinkPad was more money, though it did include some things I didn't actually need (mainly something more than Intel graphics) -- could've been nice, might've been annoying per the other Optimus complaints I recall seeing recently.
(Be careful reading the above, sometimes there is something like a fingerprint sensor that is not compatible. Clevo tries to use the same model for many different customers and so sometimes not everybody can be perfectly satisfied)
* System76 came before the Dell XPS (as far as out of the box installed Linux).
* System76 drivers are distributed via private repo.
* Dell's patch work is often upstreamed so non-Dell hardware/customers can benefit.
* When I bought a Dell XPS 13 9160 it shipped with many hardware issues. Keyboard double press issues, screen flicker, and (my personal favorite) a null pointer bug in the WiFi so that if you switched wifi connections it would result in a kernel panic.
* Never had any driver issues or bugs I had to sort out on my own with my System76 and my Galago UltraPro is still trucking.
* System76 support is vastly superior to Sputnik support, the one time I needed System76 I emailed them and they sent a replacement part (ethernet gate). For Dell, at least back when I was actively using it as my daily driver, User forums were the primary support channel.
* System76 (for now) uses Clevo as a thrid-party system provider (just like Sager).
* Dell uses their own manufactured hardware which is often a step above in build quality.
Based on my experience with both and with installing Ubuntu most recently on my Dell Alienware 13, I seriously doubt that Ubuntu "just works" with the hardware. Even on my Alienware where I replaced the Broadcom networking card with an Intel one for better Linux support, I still had to do some tweaking to resolve graphics issues and various other minor annoyances. For reference, part of the changes I had to apply I followed from here:
https://github.com/andrewwakeling/alienware-13-r3-ubuntu-16....
So while, hopefully, the amount of work System76 has to do these days to configure Ubuntu is small, I have no trouble believing that there is still some to be done. In particular hardware integration things like keyboard back light control or proper optimus support probably involves some amount of work.
At the end of the day, System76 came out of the box as a working Ubuntu machine with 0 work or tweaking required from me. And even now my System76 Galago UltraPro is still the only laptop which I have had that 0-configuration experience with (and it's still trucking).
For me, both have their strengths and weaknesses. If I were in the market for a new, Ubuntu pre-installed laptop...I would still consider both.