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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

Why does System76 spend (presumably valuable) resources on Pop!_OS when it presumably works equally well on other Linux boxen?

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They're selling a product, and want control over its quality.

Every few years, a new Linux desktop distro pops up because the old one somehow faceplanted.

Ubuntu, Fedora/RH and (open)SUSE have been the top desktop Linux distros for 20/30 years... Sure others come and go but there's been plenty of continuity.

I also don't see Pop_OS supplanting any of the big 3...

I can. Ubuntu is decreasing in quality and Pop OS is already being billed as the better Ubuntu. It has a good commercial backing and is slowly but surely gaining popularity due to its polish.

That won't happen. It's easier to fix Ubuntu than to fix Pop. Plus Canonical has just much better engineering and resources, and have been in this game for longer. The only reason People prefer Pop is because of its theme (I find it hideous, but to each their own), that it's marketed towards gamers (I don't think there are any significant performance differences between both) and that it comes with Flatpaks instead of Snaps. People just hate Ubuntu because of Snaps.

Larger organizations with a lot of salaries to pay are also typically risk averse and therefore much less willing to make huge bets on adventurous experiments into the unknown.

I can also confidently say that most people using Pop aren't using it because of the theme, and Pop!_OS is actually marketed to STEM and developers rather than gamers. It's just that a lot of PC gamers like what Pop!_OS has to offer to them, so it seems that way by word of mouth.

No, supplanting seems unlikely. But System76 also controls the release cycle for Pop_OS! whereas the others might not align with their hardware product releases. As long as they lean on an existing distro for the vast majority of software, it seems like a reasonable strategy to me.

I've heard rumor that the future of OpenSUSE Leap is now in doubt.

I think Ubuntu and Fedora are both unsuitable for this purpose too, because both have a track record of pushing out dodgy stuff before it's ready (like Fedora shipping SystemD in 2011.) And Ubuntu particularly has a track record of pushing shit that's obviously DOA, like Mir, Unity, or snap. At least when Fedora does something like ship SystemD before the kinks are worked out, what they chose does eventually become the mainstream. But you're still a guinea pig with Fedora, making it a poor choice for an OEM distro.

> I've heard rumor that the future of OpenSUSE Leap is now in doubt.

Yes because the future is OpenSUSE MicroOS aka ALP. Rolling release, immutable system, all apps are containerized (Flatpak and Toolbox/Podman). Using it right now, easily best Linux desktop to date, even with a few bugs here and there.

Ubuntu and Fedora, for all the bugs and shit they've pulled over the years, are still way more usable than pretty much any other Linux desktop outside the big 3...

You forgot Debian, who was there before and it's essentially Ubuntu minus some cruft.

And with such outdated software it doesn't run on a laptop until it's ready to be replaced...

Not at all. For desktop use you can stay on Testing or Unstable which are just as up to date as any rolling distribution.

The 1st release of Ubuntu was 4.10 in 2004.

Perhaps you meant Debian?

Red Hat and SUSE do go back nearly 30 years. Only Slackware is as old, AFAIK.

I'd love to see a vertically integrated Linux solution, like how Apple does it. I'm certainly rooting for System76 :)

Vertical integration works really well to control quality of your platform if you have the resources to make it happen. You _could_ make the argument that System76 is too small of a company to financially make this work, but the payoff is a better product.

> …the payoff is a better product.

This is what I'm wondering about, but I'll take your word for it. Thanks!

I don't think anyone can claim seriously that PopOS is "tailored" for their PCs any more so than for other PCs. Ubuntu will probably run equally well on those PCs.

The key is that the QA team validates all kernel updates and other changes on all System76 systems, and provides professional support that you can reach out to that are experienced with providing support for Pop.

I'd imagine user support has a lot to do with it, if most users stick with the OS you give them, then it makes reasoning about any problems they might have considerably easier.

That's a persuasive argument for creating/maintaining a home-grown distribution, thank you!

Same goes for Red Hat? And I guess "equally well" may be true, but ymmv, so there is that edge.

And then there are people like me that prefer to spend their money on parties like this.

Actually Red-Hat was the first Linux vendor to acknowledge there is no money to be made in the Linux desktop, so what they do is to keep the basic infrastructure of a UNIX desktop going.

It was this pivot move that allowed them to be were they are in the world of Linux distributions taking over big iron UNIX on the server room.

And now Red-Hat is basically owned by the same vendor as AIX, z/OS and i.

And now System76 has proven that there is money to made in the Linux desktop if you sell Linux desktops.

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