
Linux distro review: System76’s Pop _OS - seaghost
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/linux-distro-review-system76s-ubuntu-based-pop_os/
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geophile
I've been using a System76 Darter with Pop OS for over a year now, through, I
think, four releases. Everything about the hardware and software has been
wonderful. I decided to abandon Apple MBPs due to software regressing in both
design and implementation, and the execrably bad hardware design decisions
lately (touchbar, butterfly keyboard, greatly increased fragility to obtain
marginally lighter and thinner cases).

For similar specs, the Darter was far cheaper, (and, in fact, 32GB hasn't been
available on an MBP until recently). And System76 support is stellar, for both
hardware and software.

I have been using Linux for 20 years now, and the System76 hardware/software
combination is the best I've experienced. Wifi just works. Printing just
works. Power management just works. I have not yet found myself diving down
Stack Overflow and google rabbit holes trying to solve obscure configuration
problems.

Apple is turning into 90s-era Microsoft and System76 is turning into early
2000s Apple. Which is terrible for Apple customers, and great for System76
customers. System76 is focusing on extremely polished hardware/sofwtare
integration. Now their hardware is not in the same league as Apple's -- they
resell someone's hardware. But the integration is excellent, and they are
starting to design (and manufacture?) their own hardware. They'll get there.

The one thing that Apple still has over System76 is integration with all of
their other devices and services. I still have an iPhone, and I still have to
have an Apple computer for syncing it, and managing my iTunes media. But for
day-to-day computer use, and for software development, System76 is what I use.

~~~
spurdoman77
> Apple is turning into 90s-era Microsoft and System76 is turning into early
> 2000s Apple.

I would love to believe this, but it is very hard. Ill try out some system76
laptop in the future. However I think just alone the fact that I live in
Europe will make it worse experience in terms of support, shipping times etc.

------
jasoneckert
I installed Pop!_OS on my 2013 Mac Pro tube just over a year ago (it's my
development workstation), and can't say enough great things about this
distribution. The attention to detail that System76 made to the UI for
developers is perfect, and I've had to do little-to-no customization.

The quickest way to love Pop!_OS is to get used to the keyboard shortcuts on
day 1: [https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-keyboard-
shortcuts...](https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-keyboard-shortcuts/)

------
seaghost
If someone like to use Mac OS shortcuts I highly recommend
[https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto](https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto)

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jlangenauer
I built a new PC about a month ago, and installed it to dual-boot between Pop
OS and Windows - this after almost a decade of OSX.

I had intended to make Pop OS my primary workspace, but it's now been 3 weeks
since I've even loaded Linux, and have been working in Windows the entire
time. The reasons for this:

1\. Pop OS had issues with my graphics card. I even bought a AMD RX5600 rather
than a Nvidia card due to the existence of open source drivers. Nah, no such
luck. I'd get occasional crashes (which seemed to diminish once I'd updated
the bios using the Windows software for the card). But that's not all: the GPU
acceleration that Google Maps uses would consistently and quickly freeze the
entire machine - not just Chrome, the entire machine, and only a hard reboot
would get it back.

1.5 (Probably related to 1) Weird pauses of 30 seconds or more. They'd happen
when opening alacritty, and also when opening Chrome. This is on a brand new,
reasonably high spec desktop machine.

2\. Inconsistent shortcuts drove me mad. Want to copy something from Chrome?
Use Ctrl+C. But from the terminal? Then it's Ctrl+Shift+C.

3\. I discovered WSL2 in Windows. It works pretty much flawlessly, is
awesomely performant and tightly integrated with Windows. You get all the
parts of Linux you need to develop, and none of the hassles of Linux.

I bought a Windows license for this new PC thinking I'd occasionally need it
to run a game or some other software. Yet it's now my daily working system.
Who would have thought?

~~~
axaxs
Yeah, you were in an unfortunate situation with your graphics card, which the
problems stemmed from. Navi support was just added in Linux 5.3 iirc, and that
was just the first draft of the drivers. Then for a while you had to use a
specialized mesa build from git. A real headache to be sure, but my Navi is
now running swimmingly. I'd probably give it another go after the next PopOS
release.

------
SomeoneFromCA
Their Gnome theme looks like it is from 2002.

~~~
izietto
And that's not necessarily a bad thing

