What makes their stuff so great? I was customizing a gaming rig on their site the other day and it was wildly overpriced. I imagine you can match their specs for this laptop at cheaper prices.
I purchased a Thelio Mira awhile back and have been happier with it than any other PC/laptop I've owned before.
The big value add that System76 is having a Linux desktop that is guaranteed to just work out of the box the same way you would expect and Apple machine to work out of the box. In fact, I've probably had less issues with this machine out of the box than any new macbooks I've had in the past few years.
I've built plenty of my own PCs before and run linux as my primary desktop multiple times, and my Thelio is a wildly better experience than in the past. The build quality is excellent and for the first time I can really use Linux as my primary desktop with no problems.
Building a PC yourself is always going to be cheaper, and for many people that's the preferred path anyway. The point I'm at in my life I would much rather pay a premium to not have to worry about that at all (especially when it comes to hardware on linux).
If anyone is look for a "just works" linux PC, I've found system76 to be a great experience.
Both actually, the markup is extremely high on their stuff if you try to get a gaming rig from them.
I built all my PCs since I was 13, and I can say it's not as involved as people think. You really kinda screw in the motherboard, pop in a cpu, and a graphics card/ssd (or if you have no need for a discrete GPU and you get one of those CPUs with decent integrated graphics, you are basically only popping in a CPU). There is like two wires that go from your PSU to mobo at best. The thing is pc hardware prices are already absurd since Covid, so when you add in this extra markup on labor, you are just getting something that's way beyond normal prices. You might look at a $1600 price tag and scoff at it as nothing, but its really a $800 dollar machine with all this extra stuff added or marked up. I've seen people look at $2000 pre built machines and just think they are crazy for buying at that price. It's like ... I don't even think its a money thing, it's like a scammy thing. Imagine if I show up and sell you a iPhone 10 at iphone 14 prices. It's the principle of the matter.
You know, there are some afternoons where I don't know what to do with myself. Setting up/building a PC is an hour for me. If it's new to you, it might be an afternoons worth of work. It's not an endless multi day fiasco, I promise.
In general, how serious are these driver compatibility concerns for modern laptop hardware?
The machines I have from system76 are rebadged "Clevos" (I got dog hair in the fan and replaced the fan, which necessitated investigating. My AMD one with original fans is NL50NU) https://www.clevo.com.tw/
The POPOS full disc encryption out of the box was another selling point. I'm not sure thats easy to set up on on a new install.
The support is good, when I had issues going up a major version (I think steam installed something newer than what it was expecting) and I couldn't figure how to get the OS to upgrade despite tons of command line foo, I put a ticket and they pointed me in the right direction.
> In general, how serious are these driver compatibility concerns for modern laptop hardware?
If you're not using anything Nvidia related, the process should be smooth as butter. Any Intel or AMD chipset from the past 5-7 years should be well supported by now.
Also, the support and open firmware.
My system 76 firm ware feels like abandon ware
For me, buying from an upstream-oriented Linux hardware vendor is about getting an assurance that on any distro newer than the hardware, everything will just work. I always plan to perform an installation because I have distro preferences.
With System76, a stable, fast, open-source BIOS is also part of the value proposition.
Personally, I'd never get an NVIDIA laptop again, 'supported' or not. At the end of the day, NVIDIA's kernel module will constrain what kernel versions you can use regardless of what any downstream vendor does. That means possible version conflicts with other out-of-tree kernel modules that I actually want, like ZoL.
And what project would that be?
Try customizing an Apple product. It's also wildly overpriced.
System76 provides top-tier support. That alone is expensive.
Compare to this instead:
https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/p/laptops/yoga/yoga-2-in-1-seri...
They also have a list of which of their laptops they tested with Linux:
https://support.lenovo.com/pl/en/solutions/pd031426
Again, System76 doesn't have a price yet for their Ryzen 7 laptop so I can't say if this Lenovo is overpriced in comparison. Maybe, maybe not, but given this Lenovo price, I'm pretty sure System76 ain't going below $2000.
But for those of you in EU and Australia, this is a nice option. I've considered importing it.
Compare to almost literally any other laptop, where uttering the word "linux" gets you nothing more than a voided warranty and a strong YOYOMF, and some fraction of customers will see value in System76's approach.
Pixel for pixel, watt for watt, you could do better elsewhere. But only with a Windows preload and jumping through hoops if you ever have a hardware failure and have to reinstall the preload to run some awful diagnostics before getting an RMA, for instance. Awful experiences like that really take away from the "value" of a cheaper machine, if your time is worth money, as I suspect it is.
NVIDIA + Coreboot is not a linux-first experience by any stretch of the imagination. Unless you want to be stuck on POP OS for forever.