
Pop OS 20.04 LTS - jamieweb
https://pop.system76.com/
======
markphip
I got sick of waiting for Apple to fix their keyboards and built myself a
custom Ryzen-based desktop. I chose to install PopOS 19.10 on it and it has
been great. I plan on waiting a few weeks to upgrade to 20.04 and will then
probably stay on that version until the next LTS release.

I never used Ubuntu as my daily driver so it is hard to say what is better,
but PopOS has been great and has good defaults. It was not hard to adjust
despite having used OSX for the previous 12 years. I work from home 95% of the
time so working on a desktop was an option and I still have my old 15" Macbook
from work around when I need to travel to the office. I will probably just get
it upgraded when Apple refreshes the 13" Pro.

Anyway, +1 for PopOS and you do not have to run System76 hardware to use it.

~~~
derethanhausen
Did the graphics you chose have quality, easy to install drivers? Been
thinking of doing something similar.

~~~
bgorman
If you have Intel or AMD graphics work perfectly under Linux. You don't even
need to install drivers because they are shipped in the Kernel.

~~~
blackfawn
Out of curiosity, do people have issues with Nvidia in Linux? I've seen
similar sentiment in the past but I've never really noticed any issues with
the nouveau (open source) driver. Due to CUDA work, I primarily use the
proprietary drivers which work well too (other than an annoying suspend bug
introduced in 18.04 and seemingly unfixed in 20.04)

~~~
mcv
Nvidia is supposed the be the big advantage of PopOS: you can download the
Nvidia version of PopOS and it takes care of everything for you.

------
deadbunny
After being disappointed with Ubuntu's move towards snapification of apt
packages (apt-get install chromium installs the snap, lxd is snap only now)
along with my growing unhappiness with Canonical way of doing things I have
been thinking about another distro. I would prefer to stay on a Debian based
distro so PopOS looks promising.

Can anyone answer the following?

Does Pop inherit Ubuntus snapifictation with 20.04?

Do they release newer kernels for the LTS releases like Canonical does with
Ubuntu LTS?

Do they pack ZFS in the kernel like Ubuntu?

~~~
ohazi
> I would prefer to stay on a Debian based distro so PopOS looks promising.

Have you considered using Debian?

Personally, I prefer to run regular updates often and full-system upgrades
rarely/never, but I also want to use software that isn't ancient. The LTS
model gives me half of those things.

I don't know if that's what you're hinting at with your comment about newer
kernels, but I've found the testing and unstable branches of Debian to be a
far more pleasant experience overall than Ubuntu (either the LTS or the full-
upgrade-every-six-months variants).

They're both rolling releases. Don't let the names fool you... If you follow a
small handful of best-practices (e.g. enabling apt-listbugs) they can be quite
stable. The system on my old laptop has been running without major issues for
almost a decade.

~~~
flyinghamster
Any other tips besides apt-listbugs? I've long eschewed Debian because the
stable branch is painfully so, I had some bad experiences with testing years
ago, and I've felt that unstable was too risky to use as a daily driver.

The other sticking point is ZFS. Guess I'll have to spin up a VM and play
around a bit before I switch to Pop! or straight Debian.

Canonical's obsession with snap is about to push me away from *buntu, and I'm
ready to bail out. I had misgivings about snap from the first I'd heard about
it, and my misgivings are turning out to be well-founded.

~~~
ohazi
Here are the official suggestions:

[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_pr...](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_practices_for_testing.2Fsid_users.3F)

apt-listbugs is really the main one for me.

When I upgrade, I pay close attention to the package change lists. If packages
are set to be removed, especially a lot of important looking packages, I
cancel the upgrade and investigate. Usually this means that something has gone
wonky with dependencies, or not all of the packages that need to be upgraded
in lock-step are available yet. Usually this resolves itself after a few days,
but sometimes you can coax a partial upgrade if you find the culprit package
and hold it.

Speaking of holding, apt-mark hold/unhold (or equivalent - I think there might
be a better way to do this now) is your friend. I usually end up holding
packages like the ones mentioned above that erroneously want to remove half
the system, as well as any packages that apt-listbugs complains about, unless
I've reviewed the bug report and am okay with it. I'll periodically unhold
everything (apt-mark showhold | xargs sudo apt-mark unhold), then retry an
upgrade to see which bugs or dependencies have been fixed, and then hold any
remaining offenders again. Usually this will end up "releasing" package
upgrades in chunks depending on the dependency graph.

Apt should probably be louder when big parts of the system get marked for
removal. I think this the primary way testing/unstable systems end up
breaking, and it's completely avoidable.

------
plausible
I think Pop!_OS offers the most solid experience of Linux on desktops today.
Apart from the lack of proprietary codecs by default (I know there are
licensing issues, still I missed it), the default settings are pretty good. I
reserved a whole day to set it up when I decided to install it, but right
after the installation it felt ready to work, just needed to install some
things and transfer my stuff.

Their decision to support Flatpak by default, to create a recovery partition
which allows the user to reinstall the system without losing data (in a no-
brainer way), and their overall attention to detail won me over. Kudos to the
team for creating this distro and making it available for other computer
brands.

Edit: typo.

~~~
tannhaeuser
There's a sentiment of flatpak being a community thing whereas snap being a
case of Ubuntu NIH, but isn't flatpak as much a RedHat lock-in? Is there a
technical reason to prefer flatpak over snap, or is the number/up-to-dateness
of available apps a reason to prefer one over the other? The info at
[http://flatkill.org/](http://flatkill.org/) certainly is sobering with
respect to actual security gained by application sandboxing.

I'd really hate into being drawn into another energy-consuming VHS-vs-Betamax
or BD-vs-HDDVD drama. I'd much prefer a single statically linked binary if at
all possible (though it may not be given that browsers or browser runtimes on
which many modern "apps"/packages are based have accumulated way too much crap
over the years, which I think is the actual problem).

~~~
akvadrako
There is a one big reason. Snaps are only designed to use one central
repository and the only production one is from Canonical. The server is
proprietary.

Flatpak allows anyone to run a repo and for users to track updates from
several repos. The server is open source.

~~~
pjmlp
Exactly the perfect recipe to keep a system secure, as proven by Android.

------
kroltan
Neat, on the bottom of the page there is a switch that changes all screenshots
to Dark Mode (to demonstrate the OS's feature).

But the neat part is that in the "Gaming" card, it swaps Firewatch (a
game/movie-with-buttons notorious for its gorgeous daylight scenes) to Elite:
Dangerous (a game set in space, which is pretty visually dark).

If the same attention to detail is present in the OS design itself, it's bound
to be some good.

------
acidburnNSA
And FYI they just released a new version of the Lemur Pro 14 laptop with a
gigantic 74 Wh battery. I pre-ordered one and got it a few weeks ago and am on
it now with 40 GB of RAM. I had been waiting for the high-RAM Dell XPS 13 with
linux but got sick of waiting and then this popped up. It's astoundingly light
and performant for its class. I absolutely love it.

[https://system76.com/laptops/lemur](https://system76.com/laptops/lemur)

~~~
gregwebs
That looks like it might be a decent quality build instead of a plastic piece
of junk build quality I experienced 5 years ago. I have been using Dell with
pre-installed Ubuntu since, but it is a little underwhelming and of course my
audio isn't working now. I was looking towards a ThinkPad with Fedora for my
next machine.

~~~
freedomben
I've been doing the ThinkPad + Fedora now for a few years, and it's by far the
best Linux experience I've ever had. I've had a system76 laptop (quite a few
years ago now), Dell XPS/Precision, and some Acer, HP, etc. Unless/until
Lenovo ruins the Thinkpad, that's what I'll continue to do. Current model
Thinkpad T580 i7-8650U, 32GB RAM Fedora 31. Intel graphics.

~~~
jaxn
I have Pop OS on my Thinkpad now, but the latest Fedora release has me
thinking about switching.

------
whalesalad
I wish there was a straightforward way to take the diff of all the Ubuntu
variants. Ostensibly one could take Ubuntu and run a few shell scripts (I am
grossly oversimplifying) and boom you are now running Pop.

So much time and effort goes into building an _entire_ distribution when, at
the core, 90% or more of the thing is identical to Ubuntu LTS. Am I missing
something?

Also... the name with the exclamation and the underscores is one of the most
user hostile and nonsensical things I have ever seen in open source, since
brainfuck the language.

~~~
elagost
A heavy criticism of a lot of these ubuntu-based distros is "ubuntu + a custom
PPA", but system76 does actually put in a lot of work into a custom kernel and
some neat UI tweaks that make the OS on their hardware really well. They also
have a firmware updater for their systems built into the settings program. The
whole experience is a lot more refined than Ubuntu, I believe. It's a great OS
for their machines, as well as any laptop with hybrid Intel/Nvidia graphics.

~~~
gshulegaard
I have been a heavy Ubuntu user for awhile now and currently I have a Dell
Precision 55 __with Ubuntu 18.04 (came with it) for work and a Lenovo X1
Extreme with PopOS (18.04) that I installed on my personal machine. I think I
would install PopOS over vanilla Ubuntu in the future...and I have not had a
similar feeling for various alternate distributions like Mint, KDE, or even
distros outside of Debian /Ubuntu (e.g. Manjaro). PopOS is the first
distribution that I feel like adds a layer of polish and user-friendliness
that I find worth it.

I have high hopes for future Ubuntu (desktop) release which seem to be making
moves in the right general direction, but at the moment PopOS is probably
where I am going to hang my hat.

~~~
roseway4
I run PopOS 18.04 on a Lenovo P1 (sister machine to the X1 Extreme). It works
flawlessly and is quite beautiful. I've had issues with Thunderbolt docks, but
then again, I had the same with a MacBook Pro 2018.

------
bgorman
I really like what System76 is doing by catering to power users and
developers. However I think that long-term Ubuntu is not an ideal base, and I
would prefer a rolling-release distribution with minimal packages, a good
ports system and the latest kernel. I know a lot of people have experience
with debian based distributions, but Debian is really not the best distro if
you want to customize things or have a relatively rare toolchain (common for
developers). All the debian specific changes are akin to small papercuts that
really make for an unpleasant experience over time.

When you think about it, most developers use Mac OS with a ports system
(brew), combined with Flatpack-like packaging for some big apps. I think this
is what the Linux Desktop needs to emulate to get more market share. Linux
definitely has a huge advantage by being able to run docker containers
natively.

~~~
kitsunesoba
I would love to see a DE/distro that more closely emulates macOS. A lot of
people will point to Gnome and especially elementary OS for this, but they're
really only Mac-like in that they're not Win9x-inspired like most other DEs
and take a few design cues from various Apple software (Gnome reminds me more
of iOS, and elementaryOS feels distantly related to Mavericks-era macOS).

Of course one can always cobble something together for their own use, whether
that be so amalgamation of WM+associated utilities or hammering on KDE or XFCE
until it kinda takes on the desired shape, but nothing can replace a
purposefully designed, opinionated DE.

~~~
badsectoracula
A purposefully designed and opinionated DE cannot really exist without a
purposefully designed and opinionated GUI framework, which is probably why Gtk
is nowadays often called the "Gnome Tool Kit".

------
cbHXBY1D
I've been pleasantly surpised with Pop OS. I'd been a Xubuntu user for nearly
10 years but have switched to Pop because of all the work they've put into
hybrid graphics. I like XFCE more but Pop just has so many other good things
going for it: auto-tiling, flatpak, hardware support, etc. In fact, my next
laptop will probably be System76 Lemur Pro instead of my usual Thinkpad.

~~~
csdreamer7
As a Lemur 2012 and 2016 owner-I think you will be quite happy with it.

------
manaskarekar
So glad that they're bringing tiling features, keyboard shortcuts and
workspaces front and center!

Quick glance and looks like it's bringing together the best of tiling WMs with
the polish of Pop!_OS.

~~~
linsomniac
As a long time i3 user, I'll admit the tiling looks pretty appealing. Trying
to figure out what i3 gives me that the Pop OS tiling wouldn't. There are
definitely a few things, but probably 95% of my workflow is there.

I recently installed Ubuntu 18.04 and set up i3 via Regolith, and I'm trying
to figure out if it's giving me anything other than a new set of keyboard
shortcuts. But something about it seems a lot slower than a week ago before I
upgraded from bare i3 on 18.04.

~~~
zdragnar
> Trying to figure out what i3 gives me that the Pop OS tiling wouldn't

I don't know how other people use i3, but I didn't see anything about stacked
/ tabbed layouts. They've become so baked into my workflow that I can't use
anything without them for my personal laptop, at least- work forces me to use
macOS :(

~~~
jackpot51
We will be working on stacking support soon

~~~
zdragnar
That is wonderful news! I look forward to trying it out

------
chmk
If you have a discrete nvidia card and don't want to deal with extra scripts
and configurations, this is the way to go, everything works out of the box, or
even if don't it's a quality distro

~~~
modzu
thats what i thought and was true for a while but ive found that always having
the bleeding edge driver has led to a fair bit of instability. im back to
debian and its solid. just add contrib and non free repos and nvidia-driver is
there

------
InTheArena
I downloaded the beta a week ago, and was very impressed. I love the auto-
tiling. I've been trying to get into that for a while, but never found it
polished enough. This is a fantastic implementation, that doesn't require you
to memorize all of the keyboard combos to get started.

I'm very torn about flatpack versus snaps versus debian. This fragmentation is
awful.

I'd like to see a ZFS (with encryption) default soon as well.

------
jbj
I am tempted to get their new lemur pro as my next machine, but I don't have
enough impression of the build quality.

I am used to mac and thinkpads, and one thing I used to enjoy was the x200
keyboard along with the trackpoint and 3 mousebuttons in reach from the thumb,
does lenovo hold a patent for this, or is there any reason this type of cursor
input is so rarely seen?

I'd gladly pay a premium for the option to get a more ergonomic keyboard.

~~~
isantop
[https://gadgetboy.org/review-system76-lemur-
pro/](https://gadgetboy.org/review-system76-lemur-pro/)

~~~
jbj
Great and useful review!

------
Ingon
So excited, PopOS is by far my favorite distribution. It all started with
getting a Darter Pro from work, but now I run it on my personal laptop too.

I’ll be upgrading from 18.04, so I hope to see a lot of new stuff. Finger
crossesed, without much hiccups.

------
arh68
I am new to Pop, just installed over top Ubuntu (uptime 61d, I shed a tear).

Pop is great. The mouse feels better (but I can't increase scroll rate?), the
window manager keys are so sane. I just realized you can turn on Emacs input
for the keyboard, so C-a always means home (like os x!?).

I went to the Pop website [1] to get codecs working (Twitch), super easy.

A Ryzen + Pop!_OS is my new "Mac Pro", to replace my 2010 5,1 model. I
recommend it, having used distros from Red Hat 9 to Mint/Ubuntu to Gentoo to
Slackware.

[1]
[https://support.system76.com/articles/codecs/](https://support.system76.com/articles/codecs/)

------
lostmsu
Just watched their tiling window managed demo: neat! I am going to steal some
ideas from it for my tiling WM for Windows (hope they don't mind!).

~~~
isantop
If we minded, it wouldn't be open source. ;)

------
daniel5151
Hahaha, just this morning I'd made a 19.10 live USB to re-install PopOS on my
desktop. If only I had procrastinated a little longer...

------
jamieweb
For my own reference and for anybody who just Googled it, the SHA256 hash of
pop-os_20.04_amd64_intel_5.iso is
5478241142930dbd95143773d53be079087024d3112614a901edc2829040f996, verified
using GPG key 63C46DF0140D738961429F4E204DD8AEC33A7AFF.

Do your own verification as well!

------
Corrado
I upgraded last night and it feels like the fonts are better. My screen seems
to be more clear and easier to read.

Hopefully they've also fixed the problem where Firefox causes massive periodic
disk I/O which freezes my whole computer for minutes on end.

------
kstenerud
Wow, took me all of 3 minutes to break it. Windows share browsing is
completely broken :(

I even got the OS to get stuck with modal requestors that you can't dismiss.

SMB browsing is the first thing I try on a new distribution, because it's
almost always broken.

------
locusm
Is the ZFS root partition support there?

------
redisman
If only I could get my crappy USB Realtek Wifi to work with this I would
switch. I tried for a few days to no luck. I definitely appreciate that they
ship Nvidia drivers.

~~~
tracker1
Might be easier to switch usb wifi adapters... I'm half surprised it doesn't
work out of the box.

~~~
redisman
I'll probably get one of the PCI-e ones that they recommend. This is one of
those $10 Amazon ones.

------
fermienrico
System76 if you're reading this, please hire a new design team that is on par
with Apple, Google, IBM, etc. and a new industrial design team that has
competence at the level of Bang & Olufsen, Apple, Braun, etc. System76 has
such a huge potential but their marketing and design is lacking severely.

You guys need to realize that great companies such as Apple have a certain
design ethos(some people resonate with it and some don't, but they have a very
strong design language) and it comes from the top-down. Steve Jobs had a deep
sense of appreciation for Japanese architecture, IBM in the 60's had hired
Elliot Noyes, and Braun was aesthetically lead by Dieter Rams. IBM Thinkpads
had hired IDEO design and bunch of high class firms to design their products.
Nikon hired Pinin Ferrina. Study the history of hardware companies and what
made them great.

System76 has the potential to be the most amazing linux-based computer company
in the world - but they don't have the right type of leadership. Leadership
needs to have good "taste".

~~~
Klonoar
I'll be the first in line to say that, in general, Linux/OSS-centric companies
never get this right.

But this is just such a strange thing to say:

"System76 if you're reading this, please hire a new design team that is on par
with Apple, Google, IBM, etc. and a new industrial design team that has
competence at the level of Bang & Olufsen, Apple, Braun, etc."

That is not only absurdly expensive, it disregards the actual situation: open
source work in general suffers from a lack of designers willing to be
involved. If this was a simple thing to do, I'd wager System76 would have
already done it.

On a personal note, I'd much rather they get to a point where they're
fashioning their own hardware... otherwise I'm staying on a Macbook, because
I'm not going back to plastic shells. The software design can wait, it's not
like it hasn't already done so for years.

~~~
rpdillon
> because I'm not going back to plastic shells

I'm intensely curious about this stance. Apple popularized the aluminum case
in laptops, and having owned a dozen each of aluminum and plastic/carbon fiber
notebooks, aluminum is just... worse. It's heavier, more expensive, and every
substantial impact is a permanent mar on the finish. Why is non-plastic so
necessary? What advantage is there?

~~~
Klonoar
Plastic feels cheap and shoddy. Macbooks (and such laptops) feel premium, and
I want a premium product. I don't care about the price for a device I live
with and work on daily.

The weight doesn't bother me, and in fact I _prefer_ it having some body to
it.

Regarding impact... my 2015MBP doesn't look a day old. It's tanked hits that
would break other laptops.

