
Thelio – System76 - secure
https://system76.com/desktops
======
nwah1
The exciting part is not the case, nor the specs, nor the OS. The exciting
part is that they are attempting to use open hardware and firmware to the
greatest extent they can practically achieve.

They have created an open source "daughter board" for this purpose.

~~~
fermienrico
I strongly believe that being able to hire a top-notch industrial designer can
change the entire course of the company. With Apple, it was Jony Ive and for
Braun it was Dieter Rams. With IBM, they were the executives that had an
impeccable taste in design which propagated from top-down. System76 is well
positioned to be in this space to shall I dare to say - compete with Apple?
Only if they invest in design. It sounds like a stupid non essential thing but
design sells. When it sells, boy it sells; it makes the backbone of a company.

As it stands, System76 has mediocre branding and design in my personal
opinion. Not great, but also not bad. I am not excited about the wooden trim
approach integrated in the PC case. But, these things are subjective. If they
nail ID, I believe they have a really bright future. When I say, hire a top
notch designer - I mean, someone who can change the world type; not someone
that they can just hire by posting a job ad. But, it has to start from the
owners of the company. If they think Design as a cost center in marketing,
forget about it.

~~~
puranjay
I was looking to build a computer recently and was disappointed to see that
virtually every cabinet _looked_ like a cabinet

Not that there is anything wrong with it, but there has been so little
innovation in PC design for so many years. Everything is still dominated by
LEDs and sharp edges and some desire to appear "techy"

It's like we're still living in an era where computers are a novelty, not just
another thing in the house

~~~
noir_lord
Agreed, I've always preferred the plain box approach to PC building but it's
getting harder to just _find_ one.

Coolermaster served that role for years but seem to have vanished.

Recently I ended up putting nearly £2K worth of equipment into one of these.

[https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categories/Products/Cases/Carb...](https://www.corsair.com/uk/en/Categories/Products/Cases/Carbide-
Series%E2%84%A2-100R-Silent-Edition-Mid-Tower-Case/p/CC-9011077-WW)

It's quiet, neat and doesn't have a glow in the dark multi colored LED
anything anywhere.

~~~
Fnoord
There are quite some Lian Li cases which don't have a plethora of LEDs. Mine
has, I believe two: one for power, one for HDD. Neither of these are
connected. The front panel lid can be closed. You end up with a case which has
dust filters and can fit many HDDs. Not that it _has_ many HDDs (it has one
SSD and one HDD); I have a NAS instead.

~~~
zepearl
I ended up buying a Lian-Li PC a79 ([http://www.lian-
li.com/pc-a79/](http://www.lian-li.com/pc-a79/)) because it was basically the
only case available on the market into which I could fit at least 3 IcyBox
disk encloures - basically all other cases nowadays have fancy stuff at the
front which prevents the installation of disk enclosures :(

(another good one was Sharkoon REX8 or its predecessor T6 Value but both
aren't apparently produced anymore, bah)

------
arminiusreturns
From one of the reddit threads where someone from System76 was active, the
cool thing to me is how they are aiming to slowly offload functions from the
motherboard onto foss hardware. That has started just with the fan controllers
and sata backplanes, but it sure to progress further and further, and that in
particular is what I like about where they are headed.

I think open hardware is the future, and those who are able to get there first
are going to see increasing gains as time goes on. Of course my engineer
friends always talk about how you can never verify down to the chip level, but
I think there are ways it can be done, the market just hasn't been pressured
to do it... yet.

Now if we can just start by getting Amd PSP and Intel ME removed! The first
CPU manufacturer to do this is going to gain huge marketshare. (hint hint
AMD!)

~~~
xenadu02
If System76 starts to be successful why can't I just spin up a competitor and
copy everything they do? I don't even need to do the work to copy them, I can
just use their open-source designs and software. With zero overhead I can sell
everything they make cheaper.

How are they not doomed to go out of business?

~~~
quantummkv
Just like RedHat didn't go out of business despite basically giving away RHEL
as Centos for free to everyone.

People, especially the professionals, want the complete experience, from
hardware to support and everything in between. Can you provide the level of
support they provide while being cheaper than them?

> With zero overhead I can sell everything they make cheaper.

Chinese brands do this all the time with Apple. They copy the Apple iPhone
designs wholesale including the UI themes, make it cheaper, and yet Apple
makes more money than all of them combined.

~~~
camjohnson26
And the people who know the product best are the ones employed by the company
who actually built it, so they have a built in advantage in
consulting/support.

------
appleiigs
A nice change from the LED lighted boxes you often see for high end machines.

I’m hoping they do a nice laptop. HN will need to put their money where there
mouth is if System76 comes up with a thick laptop with replaceable battery,
upgradeable RAM, lots of non USB-C ports and a keyboard with some travel. A
niche System76 could really fit into.

~~~
sehro
You mean like the Serval? Or the Gazelle, if you want a slimmer version of the
same thing? Both have upgradeable RAM, lots of non USB-C ports, and
replaceable batteries. Both are quite handy systems.

~~~
appleiigs
Yes, the Serval and Gazelle with a modern Thelio look. They really looked
dated as they are.

~~~
cobbzilla
Serval is very dated, but the Gazelle is darn "close" to a nice modern look &
feel... for a Linux laptop it's about as close to MBA as you're gonna get. But
overall I'd agree an "across the board" update would be most welcome. S76
makes great hardware and their design aesthetics have been steadily improving,
I'd keep an eye out here, don't discount them.

~~~
nl
This is the Gazelle you are talking about?
[https://system76.com/laptops/gazelle](https://system76.com/laptops/gazelle)

With the circa-2009 Acer plastic look? Big plastic air fins, feet that stick
out the bottom to stop it sliding into t bad properly, huge ( _huge_ ) bezel
around the screen?

The Oryx looks much more modern - are you sure you aren't talking about that?
[https://system76.com/laptops/oryx](https://system76.com/laptops/oryx)

~~~
cobbzilla
I think they must have rev’d the Oryx (or I forgot) but yeah, that’s the more
modern looking model.

------
wpdev_63
It's really hard to compete in the desktop segment with enthusiast customers
as they are more likely to build their own desktop at a better price. Never
the less it presents a great option for people who want open source(freedom)
hardware in a complete package.

I really hope they continue their open source aspirations with their laptop
line as it well be a compelling alternative to the typically macbook dev
machine.

~~~
dogma1138
I don't think they are competing for the same market, they compete for those
who don't care about building a PC but still want FOSS software as well as for
some business customers.

There are plenty of people that are developers or Linux users (e.g. data
science) that don't know anything about hardware nor do they care to know
anything about it they just want something that works, sure they can spend
time "researching" it but why bother? famously even Linus said he doesn't
install his own linux distro not that he couldn't but even he would actually
need to do some research if he would want to build one completely from
scratch.

So their target market is essentially the person who would buy a Mac Pro or a
dell workstation and if they have good support for theirs both in terms of
FOSS software and post purchase hardware support they have a market to sell
too.

I know people that spend 5-10K on a Dell workstation just to have "official"
Linux support and decent onsite service, if these would sell outside of the US
they would likely to switch.

~~~
Fomite
This. I bought an expensive machine from Boxx.

I could have built it myself. But I didn't for three reasons:

1) I have other work to do. Spending a day tinkering with components instead
of writing papers, getting grants, or working on code is not a good use of my
time.

2) Ordering a machine is easier in terms of working through university
purchasing than ordering parts.

3) If something's broken, I can call someone.

All of these have value.

~~~
P_I_Staker
I'd add to this point, that it's just not interesting to me anymore. I'd get
some joy from the act of shopping, and a little from the anticipation of
putting things together. Overall, it'd be kinda like doing the dishes though.
Ultimately, it'd come down to the cost. If I could save $200-500, forget about
it; less and I'd have no problem paying for something high quality.

~~~
Fomite
Also that. I've built enough computers in my lifetime. Planning what I want,
and the cool things that I'll do with it? Sure.

Clearing a day of meetings and writing so I can deal with cable management?
Meh.

------
Jeaye
I've been using my System76 Oryx Pro for two years and I love it. It's a
powerful laptop and every piece of it is well supported by Linux. I run Arch,
since I'm not a fan of their Pop! OS, but it's a great piece of hardware for a
Linux user. However, I've been really craving something more powerful, for
gaming, rendering, and compiling, which still has the Linux-by-design support
and quality build.

It looks like System76 has delivered precisely that series... and at a
reasonable price. Thank you guys!

~~~
quantumhobbit
How is the battery life on the oryx?

~~~
acomjean
I have this year oryx pro from this year. The battery life is ok to poor and
honestly is one of the weaker attributes of the machine. (You have to switch
to intel graphics, with nvidia on be plugged in). right now I'm at 40% battery
and it says I have 2:20 minutes left, but honestly I'm browsing the web..
under load I think I get 2-3 hours with a full charge.

That being said I really like the machine.

------
IMTDb
Those computer seems actually reasonably priced. You can get a better deal
building them yourself but as a hassle free solution it seems pretty good.
Event if you end up installing windows on it. I am quite impressed.

~~~
sliken
Dunno, they seem pretty huge. The smallest is 14 liters and limits you to 32GB
ram? What is this.. an Apple?

Seems pretty insane to charge prices like this ($2,500 for a modest i7, 32G
ram, and 256GB SSD) and not make it expandable enough to handle the more
challenging uses.

~~~
appleiigs
There are different versions. Thelio Major and Massive. Major is up to 128.
Massive up to 768.

~~~
onli
Yeah, but there is a hole between those categories. A Ryzen processor happily
supports 64GB ram with a 4-slot board, and that is something they do not
support. If you take the Major version you are bound to get a more expensive
Threadripper processor.

But my current default build would be much cheaper and support up to 64GB ram,
see [https://www.pc-kombo.com/share/mORbPdR4](https://www.pc-
kombo.com/share/mORbPdR4). And that's also in a small case.

------
wmf
Related discussion from the other day:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18342744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18342744)

Personally I find this industrial design to be a refreshing change from other
PCs but I'm sure the wood grain will be divisive.

~~~
Koshkin
The wood finish is not "industrial design."

~~~
briandear
You are thinking about “industrial style” that looks like “industry.”
Industrial design is the art and science of designing products — it has
nothing to do with a specific look or style.

------
johnchristopher
> "I like your computer," she said. "It looks like it was made by Indians or
> something."

> Chia looked down at her sandbenders. Turned off the red switch. "Coral," she
> said. "These are turquoise. The ones that look like ivory are the inside of
> a kind of nut. Renewable."

> "The rest is silver?"

> "Aluminum," Chia said. "They melt old cans they dig up on the beach cast it
> in sand molds. These panels are micarta. That's linen with this resin in
> it."

For the twenty years of Idoru they could have sown some discrete references to
Gibson :).

~~~
Lio
This is exactly what I was thinking about. :D

It’s been a while since I read it but I seem to remember Chia was able upgrade
her system. It would be nice to see a System 76 offer logic board upgrades for
the case too.

I mean you can get motherboards from anyone but if you get them from System 76
you know it’s got good Linux support.

------
drewg123
It is a shame they don't offer ECC memory for the Ryzen and Threadripper based
systems.

I built myself a Threadripper 2990WX based system a few months ago, and the
hardest part of the built was ECC support. In particular:

1) confirming ECC support on the mobo was not disabled by the mobo vendor

2) finding "reasonable" speed ECC UDIMMs (ended up w/2666) in a high enough
density to reach at least 64GB.

I would have been happy to pay a premium to a company like system 76 in order
to save days of research into different parts.

~~~
kevinherron
Want to share what motherboard and memory you ended up with and where you got
them from?

~~~
drewg123
I have the older ASRock X399 Taichi. The BIOS is this odd mashup of glitzy OC
features I'll never use combined with stuff they took directly from AMD
without touching. There is even mention of the AMD XGBE SOC NICs in the BIOS
(and they are not wired up). The worst thing about the BIOS is that I have
some Micron U.2 NVMe drives whose option ROM causes the BIOS to hang about
9/10 times. If I disable legacy option ROMs, all is good until the next time
the board loses power, when that setting is lost. Asrock's answer was
'reinstall windows' (which would be nice, but I have FreeBSD installed).

I ended up getting Crucial CT16G4WFD8266 dimms. Crucial was painful to deal
with, and kept cancelling my order because they "could not verify key
information". I finally just ordered the mempory from provantage.com, for
slightly less. The underlying micron part number from dmidecode is:
18ASF2G72AZ-2G6D1

If I was doing this today, I might wait for 2933 or even 3200 memory..

------
rkido
This looks cool. But why do they keep marketing Pop!_OS as a different
operating system? This is confusing to people who don't realize that it's
literally just a customized Ubuntu.

~~~
dragonwriter
> But why do they keep marketing Pop!_OS as a different operating system? This
> is confusing to people who don't realize that it's literally just a
> customized Ubuntu.

Why do they keep marketing Ubuntu as a different OS? The is confusing to
people who don't realize that it's literally just a customized Debian.

~~~
trengrj
> Why do they keep marketing Ubuntu as a different OS? The is confusing to
> people who don't realize that it's literally just a customized Debian.

Why do they keep marketing Debian as a different OS? It is literally just
Linux and some GNU system components cobbled together.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Indeed, why don't they actually put Linux front and centre, since by this
point in time it should be a fairly well recognised name. They could then say
something about Pop_OS in term of their own customisation if they like, but I
find the down-playing of Linux a bit odd, especially as they do note the case
design as including "the solar system at the time of the Unix Epoch", which is
a nice Vingian touch.

~~~
ryukafalz
Linux is a fairly well-recognized name by this point, but what recognition it
does have tends to have "technical" associations.

If I suggest running Linux to some of my friends, they'll immediately
disregard it as something they wouldn't be able to use, possibly because they
know I run it and associate it with being a techie. I suspect I would get a
very different reaction if I showed them something like elementary OS without
even mentioning the word Linux.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Perhaps. But what if you mention "Pop" "<bang>" "<underscore>" "OS"?

------
Heliosmaster
My only hope is that they would ship things from within Europe, so we could
avoid the hefty (20+%) customs...

------
rdtsc
Really well done. I like the design, the wood finish the look,
configurability. Up to 40TB storage, 4 GPUs (I tried to configure a Thelio
Major), lots of RAM.

------
blinkingled
Sweet! Pricing seems competitive for what they are offering. But what's up
with the 2.5 SATA drives? I was looking to replace my Z620 which has existing
3.5" drives - looks like I can't repurpose those. 2.5" drives are also
considerably costlier than their 3.5" counterparts - never mind they also
handle heat better.

~~~
acomjean
I thought that was only on the smallest machine, but I checked and they all
have 2.5" drives. I'm not sure why in desktop they would choose to go that
route.

~~~
freeone3000
SSDs are either m.2 or 2.5" form factor. There's no need for a spinny drive.

~~~
blinkingled
You can build one with spinning 2.5 drives that are costlier than the 3.5
ones. So it's not about not needing spinning drives - for lots of redundant
storage 3.5" drives are still the most economical choice.

------
newnewpdro
If you really wanted a blob-free desktop wouldn't you just spend a bit more
and get a Talos II Lite? System76 is marketing an aspiration towards a goal
Raptor CS has already largely delivered on:

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/raptors-talos-ii-
lite-b...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/raptors-talos-ii-lite-brings-
power9-to-the-desktop-without-breaking-the-bank/)

------
tlrobinson
Maxing out configurators is always fun...

Configuration total $76,783

~~~
sigfubar
I hope it comes with a mortgage.

~~~
appleiigs
"Pay as low as $2580/month".

------
cobbzilla
While I don't have a use for their desktop systems, I've very much been
enjoying my System76 laptop; I just bought a Meerkat (mini PC) for my new
home-theater system. I've had good support experiences and in general with S76
everything "just works", which is really nice for a Linux distro/system. I'm
running Ubuntu 16.04 but the new Meerkat will be 18.04 and I'll probably
upgrade my laptop to that soon.

------
avhwl
I think they really missed an opportunity by exclusively supporting AMD/Intel
here. Would have been nice to have a competitive and relatively affordable
POWER system- open hardware and firmware is nice but kind of mooted by having
a mysterious minix black box running at all times in ring -3 (Intel ME/AMD
PSP). I guess TALOS is still the only option there.

~~~
classichasclass
Wait for the Raptor Blackbird. They're apparently trying for a very
competitively priced POWER9 system with that one, as in sub-$1k.

------
sliken
They look nice, are pretty large. Very few specs, I couldn't for instance find
anything mentioning the size of the fan.

From what I can tell it's a bog standard system, a thin piece of wood (or is
it a veneer?), and a custom fan controller on a small daughter card.

The integration is pretty nice, presumably all the driver related integration
"just works", although I generally get that with dell desktops or newegg
systems built from parts.

They don't mention much about the actual quality though. How efficient is the
power supply? How many fans does it have? Any sound insulation inside? Maybe a
aluminum/plastic/aluminum sandwich for sound dampening?

Why is the rear fan so far from the rear of the case?

Why is the motherboard horizontal which makes the case very wide, especially
for a machine with a max of 32GB ram.

For $2,500 for a modest i7 system with 32GB ram, gtx-1070, and a 256GB SSD I
was expecting more than a custom fan controller and limited ram.

~~~
cbsmith
"They don't mention much about the actual quality though. How efficient is the
power supply? How many fans does it have? Any sound insulation inside? Maybe a
aluminum/plastic/aluminum sandwich for sound dampening?"

You get that this is open hardware right? You can go to
[https://github.com/system76/thelio/](https://github.com/system76/thelio/) and
see the whole story (there are separate projects for Thelio Io and the
specifics for each model, but you get the idea). They even have a BOM:
[https://github.com/system76/thelio/blob/master/Thelio%20Comm...](https://github.com/system76/thelio/blob/master/Thelio%20Common/Bill%20of%20Materials%20\(BOM\)/thelio-
systems-bom.csv)

Here, for example, is all the detail you could hope for on the PSU for Thelio
Main:
[https://github.com/system76/thelio/tree/master/Thelio%20Main...](https://github.com/system76/thelio/tree/master/Thelio%20Main/Thelio%20Main%20Power%20Supply)

~~~
hlandau
I'm not seeing the schematics for the PSU here. There's plenty of detail I
could hope for that's not there.

~~~
cbsmith
And if the schematics were there, you'd hope for a complete metallurgical
breakdown of each of the wires inside. ;-)

If went out and bought the PSU yourself, you wouldn't have any more
information. I think that's a reasonable standard to hope for.

~~~
hlandau
Er, no I wouldn't. Nobody is claiming that that forms part of an open hardware
definition.

And yes, PSU vendors aren't advertising their products as _open hardware_. I'm
aware of this. So people shouldn't be making out that this PSU _is_ open
hardware. It isn't. Whether or not people are fine with that is up to them.
Personally PSUs are on the bottom of my list for things to care about the
openness of.

------
MattyRad
It's really refreshing to see such a clean design, especially from a committed
open source vendor. I don't even really have a need for a desktop right now
but it could be nice having an "anchor", so to speak, instead of being mobile
all the time.

------
sho
> And to offset environmental impact, every Thelio sold plants a tree with the
> National Forest Foundation.

In other words, they donate a dollar. Not that I'm against it, I guess.
There's just something about the "buy our product for $X and we'll donate
$(X/1000) to Y on your behalf" marketing ploy which rubs me the wrong way. I
mean I guess it's better than them _not_ doing it, but... it just feels
bordering on sleazy.

I'd much rather see "We donate N% of our profits per year to planting trees".
It's a subtle difference, but instead of a marketing technique, it feels more
like a genuine company principle.

~~~
sverhagen
Isn't the question you want to ask: to what extent did the one tree really
offset _the_ environmental impact, then we know whether the statement is true
or a true lie. Oh no, we won't, because it didn't have the word "the". That
was for us to assume, while they could tell us they meant "some", if ever
pressed on it. Nice. Got it.

------
Keyframe
Love the 70's design! How's ordering from them from EU? Any experiences?

------
cobbzilla
Off Topic: I love my S76 laptop, and just bought a Meerkat (mini PC) from
them. I'm a fan. Hardware "just works" and I like that they respect my
software freedoms. No disclosures, just a customer.

------
thinkloop
Why do they have Pop OS? It's a lot of work building and maintaining a distro
and there are tons already. Does it do anything really different?

~~~
macco
It makes a lot of sense for theme, this way the control the whole experience
with the product.

I was testing it today and it seems to work very well on my desktop. I would
say it is the first real innovation in distros in years.

------
modzu
theyre designing and manufacturing aluminum and they've got a software team
doing POP_OS, a great start... now solve the trackpad! do whatever you have to
do to get it done, and ill sell my macbook :)

------
rauhl
It looks really, really cool (very nice specs, and _attractive_ too). I wonder
how well it’ll run Debian stable. A lot of folks like Ubuntu, and no doubt
System76 are doing a fine job with Pop!_OS (gosh that’s an odd name though),
but I’m happiest with a system I can set up exactly as I like.

------
syntaxing
Pricing isn't bad compared to a Boxx desktop. I was interested until the GPU
offering. I mean I know I can install the GPU myself but it's weird to offer
RX550/580s without offering NVIDIA alternatives like the 1070/1080...

~~~
onli
Not that weird actually. The GTX 1070/1080 are in a category above the RX 580,
the direct competitor is the 1060. They do have the RTX 2070 as a replacement
for the 1080, that category is served. And of course a company favoring open
source would lead customers to buy AMD, the free drivers are way better than
what Nvidia is offering. So they set AMD where it is sound and Nvidia where
AMD has no alternative on the market, and where for ML you'd currently want a
Nvidia gpu anyway.

------
grappler
I think I'm in the market for something at least very close to what System76
is doing. But there's a niche that I'm not finding in their product lineup (or
anyone else's, so far).

The open hardware part is extremely appealing, and the reason I started paying
attention to System76 in the first place.

What's missing for me is form factor. Rather than a desktop tower, I want to
rackmount a machine in an AV cabinet and put it in my living room alongside
other devices like an ethernet switch, UPS, maybe an AV receiver, set-top box,
or other bits of AV/smarthome type gear. Like those home stereo racks people
had in the 80s and 90s (tape deck, cd changer, receiver, record player,
amplifier). But with actual rack mounting hardware like you get in modern
server rooms.

I already shopped around for, and have, a suitable cabinet:
[https://www.salamanderdesigns.com/racks-
stands/hampton-317-r...](https://www.salamanderdesigns.com/racks-
stands/hampton-317-rm/)

So when I look at their 'servers' page I see machines that belong in some
company's server room, away from humans. The small height (1U or 2U) says
"compute density" (which is one of the metrics emphasized on their product
page) and also means small fans which need to move a lot of air, which means
noise.

The servers offered go up to 28 or even 31.5 inches deep. The shallowest is
still 22 inches deep. My aforementioned cabinet has 16.5 inches of depth from
the front rails to the back rails. So while the rackmount hardware is the same
standard 19 inch width with vertical hole spacing measured in U's, there is a
distinct difference between what is built for a server rack and what is built
for an AV-style cabinet in someone's home.

A chassis with 4U or more of height would allow larger, slower 120mm fans
suitable for a quiet living room. I want something like that on sliding rails
so it can be easily pulled out like a drawer for component changes.

That would be a great bit of design for a home server, I think. And if
System76 or a similar vendor were offering this as a product category, I'd be
asking them to take my money :)

------
paultopia
That is a sexy machine. Does anyone who understands GPUs know if all the
NVIDIA do-linear-algebra-really-freaking-fast drivers that everyone uses for
deep learning will run properly on the RTX 2070?

~~~
currymj
Yes, definitely.

You can see it among the benchmarks here.

[https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/RTX-2080Ti-with-
NVLINK...](https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/RTX-2080Ti-with-NVLINK---
TensorFlow-Performance-Includes-Comparison-with-GTX-1080Ti-
RTX-2070-2080-2080Ti-and-Titan-V-1267/#big-lstm-gtx-1080ti-
rtx-2070-rtx-2080-rtx-2080ti-titan-v-tensorflow-training-performance-
wordssecond)

It's the slowest tested obviously, mainly because of limited memory (so you
have to put less on the device and compute less in parallel). But it would
still be a huge speed up over CPU, like night and day. And "as fast as a
1080Ti" is really, really great.

I will add, Pop!_OS comes with the latest NVIDIA drivers and lets you apt
install the latest CUDA and even Tensorflow without any rigamarole.

~~~
paultopia
Cool, thanks!

------
eecc
Looks like a loudspeaker... IMHO they could have fully adopted that approach,
adding a cloth covering a front grille for added airflow (and a fan perhaps?)
Anyhow, nice

------
Entangled
"...to the solar system at the time of the Unix Epoch, Thelio embodies the
character of our company and community."

Nice detail.

------
hlandau
This site is full of misleading or false claims.

>Open hardware licensed to give you rights

>Thelio, Thelio Major, Thelio Massive, and Thelio Io are >OSHWA certified open
source >hardware.

The case might be. The mainboard, i.e. _the actual computer_ , sure as hell
isn't. Insofar that they're selling "Thelio" as a computer, a reasonable
person would interpret this to mean the computer with all parts therein as
sold, for which this statement is wholly false. As for the mainboard, my
understanding is that it's both designed and manufactured by Gigabyte outside
of the US, and the schematics aren't theirs to give.

>Designed and Manufactured in Colorado

>US-sourced wood and aluminum are formed, finished, etched, and built by
artisans in our >Denver, Colorado factory. Premium components from around the
world are then assembled to >your final specifications.

The case might be. The mainboard certainly isn't. "Premium components from
around the world are then assembled to your final specifications." is pretty
ambiguous. I wouldn't normally consider a mainboard a "component", it _is_ the
damn thing. This is at best highly misleading.

Moreover, according to [1], the company is "chipping away at the proprietary
bits until it's 100% open source." This is, like Purism, stating vague
ambitions which cannot plausibly ever be achieved; Intel and AMD platforms
will never be blob-free.

[1] [https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/system76-announces-
amer...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/system76-announces-american-
made-desktop-pc-open-source-parts)

------
rburhum
I have been looking at these computers forever and am continuously waiting for
them to come up with a _nice_ looking laptop. I don't want to buy something
that looks like a Dell I had in 2002. I want something that is comparable to
my brand new MBP.

Also, I hate to be that guy, but if you are trying to compete in this market,
why even spend time doing a Desktop computer. It is a super shrinking
market... the only folks that still buy these are gamers (where sadly you just
have to live with the proprietary stuff to squeeze every cycle for
performance) or something hyper niche that doesn't matter anyway.

Concentrate on one product (probably laptops) and make something outstanding
there. There are some of us that want to buy it.

~~~
sontek
I don't play games and have both a Linux desktop and an iMac. When you are
doing a lot of distributed systems and large datasets the beefier machines
help a lot.

I also have two laptops obviously but my main workhorses are the desktop
computers. I'll even to shell into them when I'm on my laptop.

I don't have any data on it but I feel like the desktop market is getting
bigger as datasets are growing and software is becoming more distributed. My
2015 macbook sounds like an airplane taking off when I code on it. The fan is
at full throttle 100% of the time.

------
equalunique
System76 should offer some kind of "Steam Machine" edition.

------
rs86
Now I we can run chrome!!

------
Paul_S
That is Apple level of expensive.

------
francoisdevlin
It's a cool toy, and obviously I'll be the manliest developer on my team if I
had this... But what does it actually do? If I need that much compute for a
problem, doesn't renting the capacity on AWS make 100x more sense? There's no
way I could actually make use of all that hardware

~~~
dllu
It's a workstation. The following people might make use of all that hardware:

* Game development engineer who needs to test games at all graphics settings;

* Digital artist who needs to rapidly iterate by creating draft renderings quickly before sending the model/scene to a render farm;

* Roboticist developing robotics algorithms that require lots of local data collected in the field that would be infeasible to upload to AWS;

* Physicist developing computational models which should be tested on smaller instance locally before sending off to a supercomputer.

Besides, if you're planning to use a machine for compute for more than several
months, it becomes cost-efficient vs renting an AWS instance.

------
undoware
Was excited AF until I read this:

"Perfect with Pop!_OS

Pop!_OS by System76 and Thelio together form the perfect platform to create
and discover. Thelio is optimized for maximum performance. Pop!_OS provides
tools and development platforms that are always up-to-date and just a single
click or command away. "

Forgive me but I'm just not interested in running an obscure custom Linux. I
feel the same about Amazon's AWS Linux distro.

Give me one of the following, in order of preference, and we'll talk:

\- Arch \- Ubuntu \- Debian \- Fedora \- RHEL

~~~
yogeshgirdhar
I was pleasantly surprised by Pop!_OS. It's basically Ubuntu + nice theme +
drivers specifically tested and configured for the System76 hardware. No more
pain and suffering because of nvidia drivers.

~~~
mmirate
Does this mean that anyone wanting to run anything non-Ubuntu-based on a
System 76 product, gets to take upon themselves the joyous tasks of
extricating these drivers from Pop!_OS, monitoring Pop!_OS for driver changes,
and re-extricating new versions of drivers when they arrive?

~~~
sitzkrieg
I have ran fedora on a system76 machine with zero issues, but the machine is
almost 2 years old now , and a pretty no frills intel laptop so who knows

