
System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware - Aissen
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/10/10/system76-will-begin-shipping-2-linux-laptops-with-coreboot-based-open-source-firmware/
======
jackpot51
I am Jeremy Soller, Principal Engineer at System76.

Let me know if you have any questions. The source for this can be found here:

[https://github.com/system76/firmware-
open](https://github.com/system76/firmware-open)

There are instructions there for building and testing the firmware in QEMU,
you do not need to have our hardware to try it out.

~~~
jdright
Why no AMD CPUs? I just don't buy anything Intel and I'm for some time looking
at System76, but each time I go build a setup I remember why I gave up the
last time around.

Also, with the price difference between the two it would be a more interesting
hardware using this difference to acquire more RAM.

~~~
tadzik_
Can't speak for System76, but I got the AMD Thinkpad (A485), and I'm honestly
disappointed as hell and now I understand why you don't see the Ryzens on
laptops too much.

The power management is an absolute joke (the thing has two batteries and
barely lasts 2 hours total), suspend works maybe 20% of the time, and the OS
actually _freezes_ on it every now and then leaving no trace in syslog. I'd
much rather get an Intel now if I had a choice.

~~~
freeflight
What Ryzen are you specifically referring to?

Afaik newer generations have Intel beat on performance/watt, particularly in
HT heavy applications and at least on desktop.

~~~
derefr
Being able to put out more FLOPs at max pinned wattage, doesn’t imply that
you’ll take in fewer watts at idle. Power consumption isn’t linear.

~~~
freeflight
I'm not talking about "more FLOPs at max pinned wattage", that would be Intel.
I'm talking about efficiency as in performance delivered per watt used and on
that metric Ryzen has Intel beat on desktop.

So it stands to reason those new Ryzen chips would also perform very well in
laptops.

[0] [https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9_3900x-vs-
in...](https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9_3900x-vs-intel-
core_i7-9900k,6225.html)

~~~
derefr
No, you’re misreading what I said. My point was that the metric AMD has Intel
beat in is “performance per watt _under load_ ”. With Ryzen, each watt you
spend will get you _more_ FLOPs than the same marginal watt will get you on an
Intel chip. It’s like Ryzen is a car with more torque, that can turn each cc
of gasoline burned into more force, and so get you further down the road. But
that doesn’t mean that Ryzen _idles as low_ as an Intel chip; i.e. that the
Ryzen car would end up burning less gasoline over an hour of city driving.

Ryzen can be more power-efficient in e.g. a server (constant near-100% load
profile) while also being _less_ power-efficient in a laptop (constant near-
idle load profile.) People who talk about the Ryzen power efficiency numbers
are only talking about how it performs in the server-like test context (or,
often, a gaming context, where the measurement they’re using is just “what
sort of PSU do you need to power this thing at max load.”) As is evidenced by
sibling posts in this thread, Ryzen _doesn’t_ fare so well in the laptop-like
test context in practice.

------
albertzeyer
Recently there was a discussion about Huawei MateBook X Pro, which also seems
to be a great Linux notebook:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21170765)

In that discussion, several other good Linux notebooks were also discussed,
including System 76. But it was reported there that the quality is quite bad:

> but the quality is reportedly bad (flaky hardware, too-fast power drain,
> reflash bios to toggle discrete graphics (!), slow support)
> [https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/review-system76-oryx-
> pr...](https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/review-system76-oryx-pro)

> Mine is in the System 76 repair shop right now for the third time. Extremely
> unsatisfied with Oryx Pro materials and build quality. Oh it's back for the
> third time because when they replaced the top case last time, they installed
> a defective touch pad. Never again.

I wonder if that has been improved, as I'm really interested in a high quality
Linux notebook.

~~~
isantop
It's worth noting that stories like this are the extreme minority of cases. We
have a great many customers and the overwhelming majority of computers we sell
live out their entire (long) lives without any sort of incident, major or
minor. However, when someone buys a computer and everything works as expected,
that's not really all that notable because there's nothing interesting about
that, and so you don't really here a ton of "works as expected" stories to
counteract the negative ones.

I can't really find more than maybe 10-20 unique public cases of a System76
computer having serious problems. I don't want to toot our horns too much
here, but that's just not very many people compared to our entire userbase.
We're a company with the resources to develop open source firmware; it takes a
lot more support from your customers than could be afforded by 10-20 (or 100,
1000, etc.) people to do that.

If you look hard enough, it's not hard to find examples of any computer
manufacturer having issues with occasional units. That's just the nature of
manufactured products (especially high-tech electronics). No company has a 0%
failure rate, and any that claims to is lying. However, you can be reasonably
certain that any company that's been around for a decade and a half (or
longer) has a lot fewer failures than successes

~~~
sbeckeriv
Yes every manufactured product will have its percentage of issues. I think it
is how you handle the failures and the customers that will be important moving
forward.

I can not speak to the original quote but my experience as not been amazing.
My 4k Oryx Pro has rebooted randomly since the second month I have owned it. I
sent it back 3 times already, ran tests per support and even reinstalled PopOs
many times. It still has randomly rebooted. My last interaction with support
was just past the year mark of when I bought it and I was asked to pay to
replace the last item (the battery, just about everything else was replaced).

I love using PopOs. I love the 4k screen I have and the Oryx. I dont love
writing this or the response I sent to support about the request for paying
for it. It gives me pause when recommending System76 to a coworker/friend and
I will be looking around when when the time comes to get a new laptop. Support
was helpful when I had a linux issue early on but the rest of year long
interaction was about the reboots.

~~~
isantop
I'm deeply sorry we couldn't get that issue resolved.

------
dhanvanthri
These computers runs blobs in the firmware and are not fully open source. I
understand that modern users want modern performance, and that there is only a
niche market for a librebooted computer (mostly due to performance), and as a
company, it's systems76's responsibility to meet the market. But solutions
exist, and if you are trying to market an open source computer, then give me
an open source computer. What I hate most is how the top comment is from
Jeremy Soller, but they are literally using this forum as a marketing
platform, only responding to the queries that potray their initiative as good,
and ignoring the literal highest comment directly under their post. This is so
disingenuous, give me true libre laptop. (C-f tpearson-raptor on this post,
they even offers a real solution from raptor to try and make this real). I'm
grossed out.

~~~
rapsey
> that there is only a niche market for a librebooted computer (mostly due to
> performance), and as a company, it's systems76's responsibility to meet the
> market

They have no responsibility of the sort.

~~~
dhanvanthri
I just meant in terms of aligning with their profit motive; i guess the
correct word is incentive, rather than responsibility. I see your point

------
api
I love what System76 is doing, but I have to say that the name Pop OS is just
horrible. It just screams "toy" and sounds like a name that would come out of
some fly by night junkware vendor. The exclamation mark makes it even worse.
It's almost as bad as ending a name with "-ster."

Naming is hard, but almost anything would be better. If in doubt I'd go with
something bland like "System76 Linux."

I bring this up because for the past 20 years closed silos and locked down
platforms have won almost entirely on the basis of UI/UX and _polish_.
System76's hardware looks good at first glance, but everything else matters
too. An OS name that says "this is a toy and will be useless for real work" is
a real problem for wider adoption. Even worse the name tends to transfer via
mental association onto the hardware, conveying the idea that this laptop will
fall apart.

~~~
amdelamar
Agree. Also their webpage for Pop!_OS[1] should show front-and-center what the
GUI/Desktop looks like, not the logo of the OS name. They should take note of
elementary's landing page.[2]

\- [1] [https://system76.com/pop](https://system76.com/pop)

\- [2] [https://elementary.io](https://elementary.io)

~~~
api
The Pop page on system76.com is just bizarre. It leads with things that are
really niche interests and you have to scroll way down to get to what the
desktop looks like.

My 30 second impression is "this is for children who want to program toy robot
kits."

I am posting this criticism in the hopes that it's constructive, since I do
like what system76 is doing. I use a Mac right now but I'd consider their
laptops as one of the first possibilities if I ever abandoned the Mac
platform.

------
vannevar
I tried to get through this article, but the popups and advertising widgets
made the page unreadable. A more accessible article can be found here:

[https://liliputing.com/2019/10/system76-launches-two-
linux-w...](https://liliputing.com/2019/10/system76-launches-two-linux-with-
comet-lake-chips-and-coreboot.html)

------
awinter-py
BYO software is my #3 consumer electronics question (after form factor & 'does
it work at all')

and drivers are an important frontier of this. _SO TIRED_ of downloading blobs
to have wifi on linux. AFAIK there isn't even a usb wifi dongle that has an
open source wifi driver, much less a commercial wifi chipset.

even companies that are in theory dedicated to quality are teetering on the
edge of using software to enable planned obsolescence -- and also releasing
unpleasant product changes in line with security updates.

coreboot particularly interesting because of the TOTP work people have been
doing on the TPM for tamper detection.

~~~
floatboth
Most Wi-Fi blobs are not blob drivers, they're firmware that runs _on_ the Wi-
Fi card.

For Intel Wi-Fi, FreeBSD includes the firmware out-of-the-box, many Linux
distros do the same I'm sure.

~~~
awinter-py
wait what's the difference? driver runs in kernel, firmware runs in card?

~~~
akeck
I think it is, or includes, the baseband firmware for the actual wifi radio. I
believe, but I'm not 100% sure, that the FCC has specific restrictions on how
baseband radio firmware gets distributed.

~~~
madez
You, and everyone else for that matter, can go and buy a software defined
radio (SDR) and play with a radio to your hearts liking. If there is a
restriction on redistribution of open down to the radio firmware WiFi devices,
then it's dumb. If there is none, please don't spread incorrect speculation
that there is.

~~~
ac29
> You, and everyone else for that matter, can go and buy a software defined
> radio (SDR) and play with a radio to your hearts liking.

You almost certainly cant transmit legally, though (unless you have a amateur
radio license, which lets you do all sorts of stuff with useful amounts of
power).

~~~
tpearson-raptor
That depends heavily on where you're transmitting (i.e what frequency and
bandwidth you use) along with the power you're transmitting at.

First, as a ham radio operator, no, you can't just go and start blasting away
from an SDR even in the ham bands. You have to follow strict rules, including
a non-commercial content rule and you must not use encryption. The ham bands
are for people to experiment with new radio technologies and more importantly
communicate with one another using those technologies on a hobbyist level --
encryption and commercial use does not help those goals.

That being said, there are chunks of radio spectrum that are effectively
"public domain" where you can transmit within certain ERP (effective radiated
power) limits without the ham band restrictions on content, protocol, etc.
Traditional WiFi lives in one -- the block set aside for microwave cooking
devices, and therefore with a near-unusable noise floor for anything but short
range communication like household WiFi.

------
SirensOfTitan
I spent a lot of time deliberating on what to replace my 13” MBP with. The
idea of more open hardware is attractive, but both system76 and purism fell
short (mainly battery life)

I ended up going with a Lenovo x1 carbón extreme and threw ArchLinux on it.
The trackpad is worse, and battery life isn’t quite as good (I feel like I can
optimize this, but haven’t had the chance yet), but it’s such a capable
machine. I feel quite happy with it.

~~~
pgeorgi
> battery life isn’t quite as good

powertop --auto-tune is a good first start in my experience.

~~~
bproven
yeah and tlp - although my guess is i think the nvidia graphics are hurting
you here

------
jerrac
It took some work, but I convinced my employer to spring for a Darter Pro. I'm
pretty happy with it. My previous laptop was a 2016 Dell XPS 13. I've found
the larger screen on my Darter to be a lot easier to work on. Though, I do
spend most of my time docked with multiple monitors.

My only real complaint is that when the fan ramps up, it is really loud. Loud
enough to distract from meetings.... I haven't dug into the different tools
for fan control much yet, but if anyone from System76 sees this, it'd be
awesome if you implemented a nice ui for that.

------
Porthos9K
Sweet. I hope they're working on POWER9 and RISC-V offerings, too. The
x86/amd64 monoculture needs to go.

~~~
dublinben
It's not a laptop, but the Talos II workstation runs on POWER9 and has open
firmware.

[https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/](https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/)

~~~
cmurf
It uses OpenBMC firmware, now under The Linux Foundation.

EDK2 is also open source, a UEFI implementation. Looks like Coreboot has been
around about as long as EFI, and supports most of the same architectures.

So is the Coreboot advantage argument mainly that it's simpler than UEFI?

~~~
floatboth
That last sentence is a bit nonsensical. Apples and oranges. Coreboot is not a
standardized interface for OS boot loaders, Coreboot is only low-level early
initialization code. Coreboot loads a _payload_ … like EDK2.

------
rsync
I would love to buy an open, linux-based laptop to replace my aging 11" MBA
but these are _huge laptops_ \- the smallest has a 14" screen.

Should I be looking at the Pinebook 11" ?

~~~
Ardon
There’s the pinebook pro going out now. It’s not going to blow you away with
its speed, but it’s much better than the OG pinebook

~~~
lonelappde
Pinebook pro is 14" following the apple model of "more power must have a
bigger screen".

But it's a pretty low end system intended for experimentation. The store page
warns you not to buy it if you are picky about hardware quality.

------
tsp
I wish their shipping costs to Germany wouldn’t be that expensive. Hardware +
tax + shipping costs is just way too expensive. I wanted to buy an Oryx Pro
recently, but had to go for another model (non System76) because of this.

------
ckdarby
Worst company to buy a Linux laptop from. I attempted to purchase a laptop
from them in the past and got hit with crazy duties even though the wording on
the site made it appear that there were none.

Simply better to buy a certified Dell laptop such as: Latitude 7490 or
Latitude 7480

~~~
swebs
What country did you order to?

~~~
ckdarby
Canada. I'm aware there's duties but when I had ordered their website made it
seen like they handled these.

I refused to pay the extra like $150 for the laptop and sent it back.

------
OJFord
Is the value in the custom distro that's well tested with the shipped
hardware, do we think? i.e. If I want a laptop to put <something else> on,
might I as well have a ThinkPad/Dell XPS/Purism Librem?

I just don't particularly like the _look_ of the chassis, and I'm sure there's
nowhere I can see them in person to check. It's a shame that Macbooks
essentially don't work with Linux any more:
[https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux](https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux)
(yes there are workarounds and maybe it doesn't all matter - but needing a
WiFi dongle is a bit of show stopper).

------
npx
I love this concept and I love that it is proliferating. Purism offers what
I'd consider to be more attractive hardware, but that's very subjective. As of
Kubuntu 19.10, I actually consider Linux to be the best operating system for a
laptop.I look forward for 20.04 and a few years of near total disregard for
updates.

I want to be an AMD fanboy! I want (at least) 16 cores, 32 threads, a fully
open source graphics stack, Wayland, flicker free boot, and open source
firmware as described here. As it is, I just had to go with Intel/NVidia
because it's more seamless. Even though I'm not really using the NVidia GPU, I
do have it available if I want to work with Tensorflow etc. Ultimately, for me
it is a question of stability but I hope that these systems can really close
the gap.

I want something like this System76 machine with very good support for
encrypted ZFS right out of the box. I don't know if that would entail LUKS or
ZFS encryption, but I want it to work. I want a USB key that actually serves
as a key and allows me to boot or otherwise unlock the system. Again, I'd
prefer this to be a fully open source AMD/ATI system based on Kubuntu. With
ZFS, bpftrace, and Docker... this is what Solaris wanted to be when it grew
up.

I'm not sure how big the market for this would be, but I'd pay good American
money if anyone catered to it. Right now I'm using a Dell G3 Intel/Nvidia
laptop which, in fairness, is obscenely fast.

~~~
lonelappde
If you aren't using a GPU regularly, Why not use a cloud gpu? Cloud CPU is
cheap as free if it's just occasional playing around, vs $100 to $1000 and all
the manufacturing pollution to be stuck with a GPU you don't use

~~~
npx
I _wanted_ to use the NVidia GPU in this laptop, it just doesn't work as well
as the Intel GPU (I hate screen tearing). I think this will be great as a
development environment once I get around to making Docker work with the
NVidia drivers (allegedly it should). I'm not sure if you can do the same
thing with AMD gear but the ability to create a Tensorflow NN and distribute
it as a hardware accelerated Docker image is pretty cool.

------
1337shadow
Looks fantastic ! Overall a better deal than thinkpad, but would like to have
the option for a second battery instead of second disk and a joyclit too if
that's possible

------
2wrist
This has been a blooming marvellous, if depressing read.

I long for the future of open RISC-V/OpenPOWER/Arm/MIPS coherent platforms.

Thanks for your efforts and best of luck.

------
usebunsby
Are there any good laptops other thinkpads for this os?

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Dell XPS (9560 in my case).

------
3f2d8ccbd53b
Hi

I would REALLY like to see a modern coreboot laptop with a 3k (or 4k)
"retina"-type display. System76, if you can make this happen, you have a sale!

------
tomrod
Dang it, I just missed this. We picked up a meerkat a month back and it has
performed superbly.

------
Bob312371
I wonder if that's working for them as a core selling point. Does having an
open firmware really steer people into buying one of these laptops?

I'm curious to hear from an actual buyer on why they purchased that laptop
when there are so many linux friendly options available.

For web dev I've been running ubuntu on a virtualbox on my macbook pro for
years. It's pretty much just as fast as my fully specced out desktop.

Consider the fact that hardware wise they seem to be seriously lacking. All of
their laptops have a 1920x1080 display. My 6 year old macbook has a 2880x1800
display. 6 years old!

There are a ton of linux friendly options on the market now with 4k displays
and even OLED displays.

~~~
darau1
I got a Gazelle a few days ago, mainly because I didn't want to have to
troubleshoot anything when I get it. I wanted a plug and play linux
experience, and this is it.

~~~
Bob312371
That's a fair point. I tried running Ubuntu & Arch on my macbook and was
horrified to find that you have to set up and the fan regulation yourself or
else the thing will just cook itself.

Not to mention the fun you'll have setting up the wifi and the especially good
luck getting multi-touch support work just right.

~~~
darau1
I installed Arch on a Macbook and couldn't get Ethernet working, but I managed
to get wifi up. I do not miss it

