System76 Open Firmware
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Not a paid advertiser. Just a very happy customer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/10a3lqj/comment/j...
Which suggests there are pretty major changes to how they have previously done laptops:
1) The manufacturer is Emdoor(?) instead of Clevo. (I have never personally heard of Emdoor)
2) Final assembly is done in-house @ System76 instead of via Sager. That is assembly for Pangolin is done in Denver at the same place the Theelios desktops and Launch keyboards are made.
While not necessarily all in-house yet, both of these changes are a pretty massive difference so as a former owner of several System76 laptops, I am curious how much better the Pangolin is.
Edit: So after doing some googling, it seems like Emdoor is a Chinese manufacturer out of Shenzen (https://www.emdoordigi.com/about.html?category_id=0). Personally, not sure moving from a Taiwanese manufacturer to a Chinese one is actually a good thing...but still curious none-the-less.
As somebody working in a related space, _any_ diversification is a good thing simply because it forces System76 to redesign its processes to become less Clevo-specific.
Once you start, you're going to have a hard time to find an ODM that's willing to teach you the ropes _and_ accept that you're not a single-ODM shop _and_ deal with whatever fancies S76 brings up, so that limits options. (Any of these mean that S76 will be a high-maintenance customer for Emdoor, and these three more than compound in that way)
I can't overemphasize how big of a step this is.
They rebadge (mostly) Clevo laptops, which isn't inherently a problem. The value add is supposed to be in the QA/software side of things to ensure the devices work well with Linux (so far, so good).
Well, my Lemur Pro 10 suffered from multiple different bugs in their half-baked Coreboot firmware. They ripped out the default BIOS to replace it with a more open alternative (laudable!) but the process resulted in bugs that prevented sleep and caused the UEFI boot order to be reset at various times.
They shouldn't have shipped a device with bugs like this, but I was left waiting over a year to get both fixed. On a generic box which I've supposedly paid extra for the support!
Compare this to my Dell XPS13, which shipped with Linux on it too, and never had any such issues.
I admire their objectives, but the reality of the System76 experience is severely lacking compared to the ideal.
It basically seemed to translate to a $1k markup for assembling the PC (and the case, I guess).
Similar to the intel macs and such.
Quality is a little shy of a premium product, but overall not a terrible deal.
If it weren't for the fact that I have to run Windows-only tooling for my job, I would have requested the Mac in an instant even though I'm generally not a fan of Apple.
Everything worked on gnu/linux except for the fingerprint reader.
Other than that, it was a great little machine.
I know mine is a Clevo made machine, and I read somewhere they’re using a new manufacturer, which I can imagine could involve some challenges.
Hope they get it sorted. These Amd based laptops have very good performance and battery life (If you are not a gamer).
> System76 customers may request board schematics for their system by sending an email to firmware@system76.com with the subject line "Schematics for model", where model is one of the supported models listed above.
> Please include the serial number of your system for verification.
This means that you can actually troubleshoot and repair the board yourself, if you're so inclined.
by the way, your username makes me think of https://www.broward.org/Parks/Pages/park.aspx?park=5
I had a galago ultrapro 10 years ago. Loved it, loved system 76's support for it (they shipped everyone a replacement keyboard at no cost simply because they weren't happy with the one it launched with). The only part I didn't like was the plastic body which saw a lot of wear and tear. But the laptop is still working fine.
Now I have a framework. The first touchpad on mine had issues. Wasn't registering clicks unless I pressed really hard. They shipped me a replacement, I swapped it out myself and shipped them back the defective one at no cost to me.
I wish both companies the best, but yeah I do hope there is enough business out there for them both.
System76 support was very good, but the build quality of the Framework is definitely better (to say nothing of all the very exciting upgradeable bits)
System76 are still mostly selling rebadged generic laptops with their own custom linux distro (which I have no interest in). They do some good work but they are considerably more niche and don't really add much value to Framework which has the potential to grow much faster.
I have known of System76 and been interested in their products for almost 2 decades and I bought a generic laptop to match one of their models once because I didn't want to ship a rebadged machine from the other side of the planet and deal with the potential RMA/repair problems. I bought a Framework last year because they were happy to ship not just the product to me but any parts I needed to self repair. This ease of repair/ugrade could be just as appealing to a Windows/BSD user or anyone else. Months later Framework announce an AMD and battery upgrade option. This is something System76 can't do while they are slapping a badge on other companies designs.
The System76 collab with HP is a good example of what that company can do very well, bringing Linux customization experience to other manufacturers. Framework don't really need it and I would rather see them innovate on hardware than waste money on developing yet another Linux desktop environment.
Framework seems to have a better build quality than the System76 hardware, and they did a similar deal with a dev laptop from HP, that got discontinued. So it wouldn't be completely unheard of. Could also be a boost for development overhead for both considering firmward development.
I'm looking to buy another laptop in the near future, and I'm torn between the offers put forward by those companies.
Openness, Modularity, Privacy... choose two?
[...]
Intel CSME Proprietary Intel FSP Proprietary Intel microcode Proprietary"
https://github.com/system76/firmware-open/blob/master/LICENS...
By all rights, EFI, UEFI, and all the various random boot loaders shouldn’t exist because a manufacturer can just leverage one of a number of independent, interoperable implementations of the standard and support booting arbitrary software on their systems.
Despite not being large and quite well-designed, about the only thing that’s survived from IEEE-1275 into the modern era has been the “device tree” concept.
But that can still change! There are Open Source implementations of Open Firmware these days, they’re rather straightforward to bootstrap, and since so much of the higher levels are implemented in FORTH and the lower levels in platform-independent C, you get a lot of bang for the buck in adopting it, including things like booting from an arbitrary IP network or arbitrary local storage, using an arbitrary text or graphics device for output, and using arbitrary devices for input. All it needs is a set of straightforward drivers for the local hardware, since it doesn’t need to be super-fast.