
System76 Thelio: A Review - FunnyLookinHat
https://nora.codes/post/system76-thelio-a-review/
======
smacktoward
I don't understand why these boutique Linux system vendors all end up
gravitating towards rolling their own distributions -- Pop!_OS (ugh) for
System76, PureOS ([https://www.pureos.net/](https://www.pureos.net/)) for
Purism, etc.

I've been running Ubuntu on my machines for something like a decade now, and
have experience with Debian and Red Hat/Fedora from before that. I know what
to expect from these distributions. When you tell me you've rolled your own
distribution, I have _no idea_ what to expect, which turns me off from your
product. And if the answer is "you can expect exactly the same as what you'd
get from Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora/whatever," then why bother rolling a new distro
in the first place? Why take what should be a simple sales pitch and make it
more confusing?

They seem to think the idea of learning my way around Yet Another Linux
Distribution is an enticement. It isn't -- especially when the only community
around the distribution is a single small company, which means that anything I
do learn is unlikely to be useful beyond using that company's products. As
soon as I buy from someone else, or that one small company goes out of
business or loses interest in maintaining the distro, I can take all that
knowledge and toss it in the bin. No thanks.

(Weirdly, the only company in this space that seems to really get this is
Dell. I feel like I'm living in the Mirror Universe.)

~~~
lazzlazzlazz
This entire comment is a non-issue since you can specify what distro you want.

Let's not get focused on a red herring because one person decided to shoot out
a verbose comment.

~~~
pjmlp
With the same drivers?

~~~
bebop
Yeah, with the purchase of the machine you can specify Ubuntu 18.04. They also
have a ppa where you can install all of their drivers from, which works on
both pop and Ubuntu.

------
cik
I've never had a good System76 experience - over a decade of System76 use.
I've repeatedly asked to have them purchased, merely to help the community,
and every single one has disappointed.

The build quality is such rubbish, and you begin to feel it almost
immediately. I'm careful with my kit, not terribly hard on anything and I
manage to flake bits of plastic or metal off each System76. They've always
been in neoprene cases within a laptop backpack - because I'm that paranoid.
They're just rubbish.

At this point Ubuntu (or Mint, or Debian!) on Alienware is my laptop of
choice, and I run those Kingdel desktops.

~~~
skidd0
I want to chime in a contrasting opinion here. I had an old Galago that I
adored. Came with Ubuntu, swapped that to Arch then stayed happy with it for
years! It was a plastic frame, but it was tough enough to shove in a backpack
and take longboarding. After 3 years, the Ethernet port's spring clip finally
snapped off (user error), but still worked. I also accidentally bent the audio
jack, but it still worked. It finally "died" when my pup knocked it off the
couch with the charger still plugged in. The charger plug, still in the port,
hit the floor at just the right angle to snap the port's inner prong off
making it impossible to charge. I didn't notice until the next day when the
battery used it's last bits of juice then shut down.

Very happy with my System76 purchase. But! I've only ever used the one device.

~~~
dmead
You're aware they're all relabeled Chinese hardware yes?

~~~
ForHackernews
Are there any computer brands that aren't manufactured in China?

~~~
selectodude
They mean that System76 doesn't use an OEM, they use a white box ODM. You can
buy the _exact_ same laptop from several different companies.

~~~
a2tech
I suspect they’re selling rebadged clevo laptops like almost everyone

------
mark_l_watson
After the busy work of using Linux and making a hobby of configuration (I
think I started in 1992 with Slackware), it was so nice buying a System76
laptop last fall and having everything ‘just work.’

~~~
TuringNYC
I use a high-end System76 for work (~10+hrs a day) and love it. The only
problem seems to be multi-monitor support. The screens go into strange
resolutions. They flick on and off.

I've never had strange issues on other system with 2 or 3 monitor support
(currently do this at home w/ a Lenovo + 3 monitors and with my wife w/ a MBP
+ 3 monitors.)

~~~
acomjean
I haven't had this problem with my "Oryx". I'm running the laptop monitor, a
dell 24" vertical and old dell "Dual link dvi" 30 monitor.

Sometimes I plug into a hight dpi 28". Thats hit or miss depending on the
applications. There are a few that don't scale well at all.

The only problem I have sometimes is the apple thunder (lightning?) adapter
sometimes doesn't wake up, so I have to unplug the usb cable thats powering
it.

------
car12
While I haven't used a system76 Thelio, while we're discussing System76, I can
speak about a Galago pro that I bought from system76.

Noteworthy, because I was one of those Mac refugees who needed a non-mac
machine now that I don't like the new macbook keyboards or insane price bump
that macs got.

I bought a 16 GB Ram, 14" Galago pro with 512 GB SSD with Ubuntu on it.
Battery life is around 2 hours. Not too good compared to a macbook.

\- Keyboard is pretty nice, each key has a comfortable travel to it.

\- The trackpad is awful or at least compared to what I'd gotten used to using
the macbook for last many years. The trackpad feels rough, is not as
responsive or smoother as the mac touchpad either. The click buttons aren't
too nice to click either.

Bottom line is that the next time I need to buy another Linux laptop, I'll be
looking to try out the newer System76 to make sure they've fixed their
touchpad, if not, I'll go with Dell XPS developer edition, no questions asked.

Surprisingly, the touchpad being what it is, I've not seen it mentioned in the
reviews of Galago pro all that much, I suspect it's because there are not too
many ex-mac owners buying these, the touchpad feels like it belongs to year
2008.

~~~
kondro
If anyone knows of a trackpad that's even 90% as good as the MacBook ones I'd
love to give them a try.

This is honestly one of the biggest things locking me into the Mac ecosystem,
I haven't found an alternative trackpad that even comes close. I even like
Apple's new MacBook keyboards (even with them breaking all the time… at least
they fix them).

~~~
bwat49
Presently, no trackpad under linux will give an OSX-like experience.

This is mostly a software limitation with the linux desktop IMO... e.g. web
browsers like chrome and firefox lack basic features like kinetic scrolling
under linux:

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=763791](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=763791)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1213601](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1213601)

And linux desktops don't really have any kind of gesture integration (the only
one I'm aware of is gnome on wayland, and it basically only has one gesture
available, switching desktops)

I prefer using linux on my laptop, but this is definitely a big annoyance

------
Datenstrom
The last shop I worked at had System76 PCs for all the devs and they are
great. I have since switched at home also and recently test drove their new
PopOS since I needed CUDA and Tensorflow and they package them so it is as
easy `apt-get install` and it was also great. I would highly recommend looking
at their PCs and PopOS.

I just wish PopOS was built on Debian and not Ubuntu.

~~~
chipaca
> I just wish PopOS was built on Debian and not Ubuntu.

why?

~~~
bayindirh
Since Debian is not built with a commercial interest (Canonical is a
corporation at the end), the OS doesn't feel like a "freemium product".

As a person who uses Debian for a long time, and Ubuntu for throw-away VMs;
Debian feels more "pure" from a system perspective, and it's not just skin
deep.

Debian is set-up to be a leaner OS out of the box. Everything is within reach,
and deeply configurable from command line. Desktop environments are add-ons to
the system, not integrated (even in desktop versions). I don't find surprising
choices or hard to reach configuration stuff in Debian.

Even though derived from Debian, Ubuntu "standard" comes with packages from
Amazon, et. al., and sends analytics. This is not something that I like. Also,
when I install Ubuntu server, I get subtle ads of "Canonical Landscape" and
their paid offerings. This signals me that I'm using a freemium product, and
as a user, I'm not their primary focus.

Debian is of course sponsored by a lot of corporations, but at the end they
are independent and they do as they wish at the end. I'm part of the process,
and can talk with devs, and my bug reports and commits are not pre-filtered
with "commercial" interests before even discussed.

These are my feelings and experiences though. YMMV.

~~~
PopsiclePete
FWIW, recent Ubuntu versions support a “minimum” installation. You get vanilla
Gnome with Firefox and that’s about it. No LibreOffice, no Amazon anything.
Quite lean and nice.

~~~
bayindirh
That's a nice feature. However, it also shows the stark difference between
Debian and Ubuntu rather well. Debian's minimal installation is ~500 package
install with no desktop environment and anything. Just a _base_ installation
with enough utilities to install the remainder according to requirements.

~~~
e12e
The equivalent for Ubuntu is Ubuntu server:
[https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/installing-live-
serv...](https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/installing-live-
server.html.en-GB)

Fwiw I agree that the default Ubuntu desktop is a little heavy - but I also
realize I'm not the typical target user.

~~~
isostatic
I use xfce ubuntu on the desktop, but the vast majority of machines we have
(c. 2500) are servers, which by default doesn't even install sshd.

Compared with a "minimal graphics" centos server build I did - which required
a mouse to install the thing, I think I know where "little heavy" lies.

------
samcday
> The smallest Thelio, designated “thelio-r1”, stands 32 centimeters tall, 20
> centimeters wide, and 28 centimeters deep, coming to only a total of 18
> liters in volume, a good deal smaller than even the tiniest commercial full-
> GPU mITX form factor cases, most of which are at least 22 liters.

Wut?

[https://www.sfflab.com/products/ncase_m1](https://www.sfflab.com/products/ncase_m1)
\- 12.6L [https://www.dan-cases.com/dana4.php](https://www.dan-
cases.com/dana4.php) \- 7.2L

There's a pretty big community that builds high-end gaming rigs / workstations
in these cases. I've built in both. Originally I built in the Ncase but sold
it to a colleague when I moved abroad. Recently I just built in the DANcase
and wish I had have stuck with the Ncase. The extra 4 liters of volume goes a
_long_ way in improving thermals, due to the extra clearance for a CPU cooler.

Anyway, just found that line in the article annoying, even a cursory Google
search shows that there's a plethora of 7-12L SFF PC cases out there.

~~~
killaken2000
I take commercial to mean lian-li (who made their old cases), cooler aster,
antec, etc. Large volume manufacturers.

It's probably easier for them to vertically integrate the case into their
business than go with a low volume niche manufacturer and deal with the
hazards that come with that

~~~
paavohtl
Fractal Design is a pretty large manufacturer, and their Node 202 case \w full
GPU support is only about 10 liters.

------
danbolt
I appreciate that the author linked to another review if users were coming
from an OS X perspective. Or, when a review explains its biases or what is
important to the reviewer, it helps make sense of the content for me as a
reader.

------
dstaley
I was super interested in buying one of these, but the markup is just too much
for my tastes. I built out a reasonable workstation (9900K, 16 GB RAM, 500 GB
NVMe SSD, 1TB SSD, RX 580) and the cost came out to $2,359 versus the $1,582
it would take to build it myself. I could understand a markup over retail of
$100-200, but $700+ just isn’t a good value in my opinion, especially when I
wasn’t selecting affordable parts.

------
wishinghand
Has anyone tried a system76 laptop with Elementary OS? I’m curious if there’s
any issues. I’m thinking of getting a Galago but just read there’s some multi
monitor issues. Curious if there’s any other caveats I might not know.

~~~
rocky1138
If you end up doing it, please make a blog post for people who have the same
questions as you do now.

------
blueboo
I read all that and still have no idea what the point of it is, nor how
performant or usable it is. It reads like an amazon review if someone trying
to justify on overpriced purchase to themselves.

Meanwhile it looks like this product is targeted at the very people who know
how to configure their distros for their hardware, precisely nullifying the
value-add, as far as I can tell.

> Both of the Thelio’s vents show the solar system at the time of the UNIX
> epoch.

Money well spent

(But at least the I/o board is “reliable”!...ok)

~~~
mattkrause
Personally, I thought the solar system thing was a cute gimmick. I wouldn’t
buy it _just_ for that, but if I were in the market for a smallish Linux
desktop where everything worked out of the box, the rest of the review makes
it sound like a decent option. Whether you mind paying a modest premium for
that, versus doing the research/confit yourself is a personal decision
obviously.

Also, the author is a college undergrad writing on her own blog. If there’s
ever a time and place for rationalizing something, that’s it!

~~~
ianai
Their CS department has 2 faculty! I think the math department was 4-5. Must
be a pretty small school or I’m missing something.

------
Theodores
It is like buying a coach built, hand made automobile rather than a mass
produced German sportscar. The former uses some 'crate' engine, probably from
the German sportscar but it has notional appeal for people that buy such
things. If you do racing on the track and have to fix the thing every weekend
then the off-the-shelf mass produced car won't cut it. For most people though
the mass produced car with the up to date infotainment is what you want.

A 'coach built' tower PC is fine, however, have you seen how the independent
manufacturers such as System 76 compare in laptop land? The Dells and the
Huawei PCs have bezels around the screen that you have to squint to see, the
System 76 type of laptops have bezels wider than I can remember them being in
1993. Then there is the general girth of the things, it is like you need a
padded wrist support to reach the keyboard.

With autos there are people with rose tinted eyewear products that can
remember the good old days when you could fix everything yourself with just a
Haynes manual and a set of spanners. They moan about the modern cars that
might as well have the bonnet welded shut. I am a bit like this with PCs but
when it comes to actually putting money towards a PC I prefer the new and
shiny rather than the 'coach built'. Sure I want to run linux but I would
gladly risk my chances with those 'Windows only' machines from the likes of
Lenovo, Huawei, Dell and HP rather than go with something designed for Linux.

------
jpeeler
The greatest draw for me in looking at purchasing a System76 machine is
coreboot support. My understanding is that coreboot is supported (sometimes)
on older hardware, but not much modern hardware aside from Chromebooks.
Ideally I'd like to build a machine myself, but it seems difficult to do at
present with recent hardware and full coreboot support. Am I correct?

~~~
sian92
Our Coreboot support right now is very experimental, and doesn't currently
support things like UEFI, but we are progressing on it rapidly. We've gotten
lots of help from both Coreboot and Intel in getting everything to work.

One major downside is that right now the supported models are Intel-only
laptops, but in the future it's highly likely that we'll be able to fully
support all of our systems.

------
bgorman
My principle concern with any boutique desktop systems is that in order for
the business model to be viable, they need to add significant mark up to the
BOM. However I most enthusiasts can just assemble a desktop for themselves and
save hundreds of dollars. One of the easiest ways to save hundreds of dollars
I am aware of.

~~~
Finnucane
Doesn’t every manufacturer of anything have to have a markup?

~~~
inimino
Yes, but there are economies of scale that Dell or Apple enjoy which will
never apply to a seller targeting a niche market.

Not only do they get lower costs on parts, but they can afford lower margins
per unit since they have much higher volume relative to the fixed costs of
running the business.

~~~
Finnucane
So the niche market shouldn’t be served?

~~~
the_pwner224
What the thread parent (bgorman) saying is that boutique desktop systems (as
with any niche product) have to add significant markup. But, for computers,
the target market of these manufacturers can also often build a computer
themselves and avoid the huge markup.

If you sell ultra high quality waterproof headsets to audiophiles for $2500,
including a $1000 markup, your customers have only the choices of A) not
buying or B) paying the markup. With desktops, they get the 3rd choice of
building it themselves for $1600/1700.

~~~
bwat49
What's missing in this analogy though is that computers need to run an
Operating system.

When building your own system (and running Windows), you can be pretty sure
that windows will work without issues.

With linux though, it's more of a gamble, which is why a vendor that
tests/pre-configures/supports linux can be appealing

------
_ananos_
seems a bit overpriced.

Other than that, it's a decent workstation.

~~~
Finnucane
I wouldn't balk at paying a little more for a build-to-order system over an
off-the-shelf thing; I'd expect that. It would be okay as long as the charge
is not too egregious and you're getting a decent build for it. And it sounds
like you do.

------
kyberias
Why put the images on the page at all? They don't provide much additional
information being so small.

~~~
ebg13
The problem isn't the images but rather the poor site design that uses large
images as tiny thumbnails but then doesn't make the thumbnails clickable. The
images themselves are actually viewable much larger if you right-click on each
one and open the image in a new tab.

