I bought a System76 desktop a couple of years ago with an rtx 3090 for some AI work and have been super happy with it.
It was a bit expensive, but everything "just works", it's super well built, and I've had no issues for 2 years. They definitely know what they're doing
That is good to hear! Framework has not been helpful on either minor or major issues when I've tried working with them, even the forums comingle AMD and Intel laptops without clear distinction muddying the waters as to what issues are relevant to a given user.
I've had the opposite experience, personally. There's a ton of helpful information on their forum both from community members and employees. Getting NixOS on my AMD Framework 13 took some doing and the forum was super helpful when it came to various issues.
That said, I _do_ agree that the information isn't as well organized as a result of the nature of its creation.
I'm sorry but nVidia proprietary driver and "just works" doesn't belong in the same sentence. Every Kernel version update is a crapshoot. Will need to wait for the new nVidia opensource support that's supposedly around the corner, any day now.
My experience has absolutely been that nvidia proprietary drivers "just work" including during kernel updates on arch linux. Maybe there's some sort of QA going on by the distro to only ship kernels that work with them? I don't know. For me it just works.
I can mirror what gpm said, I’ve never had a problem with the proprietary nvidia driver. The only annoyance is the requirement to reboot after an update, but that’s pretty standard everywhere.
I've been using laptops with Nvidia dgpus and the proprietary drivers under Linux for about 3 to 4 years now, and I've literally never had any problem with the graphics card, the driver, its integration with my system, or anything else. The last year on a rolling release (openSUSE Tumbleweed), too. Maybe that's just me though, who knows.
I’ve never managed to get my GTX 1070 working on Linux without any caveats, though currently I’m closer than I’ve been before. If you’re happy using X11 life is relatively easy, though you probably end up needing a compositor to solve tearing - and if you have mixed refresh rates you’re seemingly out of luck even then.
Wayland is better with mixed refresh rates, and now mostly works. I say mostly as XWayland is still broken - you have to disable GLAMOUR and rely on software rendering for X applications. This is where I’ve currently settled as most software I use is native Wayland anyway.
Of course if you have a newer GPU that can take advantage of Nvidia’s new open source kernel drivers with Nouveau and you don’t need CUDA this is all irrelevant.
>I'm sorry but nVidia proprietary driver and "just works" doesn't belong in the same sentence.
No issue for me on kubuntu LTS and I am using NVIDIA proprietary drivers since 7 years ago, I even experimented with various drivers to make wine games to work and never had issues. But maybe *ubuntu gets better testing and support from NVIDIA then other distribution,
I can chime in and say that I've had numerous issues over the years, every few months. Particularly when I want to update my kernel. It was a nightmare. Now that I am free from them I won't buy their products anymore because of how annoying it was.
All developers at our company get one of these delivered as part of their onboarding. They're pretty amazing. My only gripe is I re-imaged the machine and getting all of the drivers working and configurable is kind of a pain in the ass (the byproduct being the fans are going 100% always)
I treat mine like a server, sitting in a rack. I ssh into it to create ad-hoc test/dev environments. It's really fast and reliable. Love it. Having 64 cores and 512GB RAM is a treat.
I worked for a company a few years ago that issued me a System76 laptop. It was ok. Weighed a lot and was made of cheap plastic, and it also had issues with the fan. However, for a Linux laptop with open source hardware and firmware I was ok with putting up with those niggles. Glad to see they are still rolling along.
I have a top of the line System76 Laptop collecting dust.
Completely broken multi monitor support (yes I tried the support route), it overheats underload, it fails to sleep properly, its extremely heavy and is made out of cheap plastic, and the keyboard well…
On the otherhand my Macbook Pro is a superb dev machine.
To be fair, the System76 laptops aren't comparable to the desktops (Thelio line).
The laptops are whitelabeled iirc. Whereas the Thelio is designed in-house. I love my Thelio personally - nice form factor + easy to open up and add drives etc.
I had a similar problem when I got one - died 2 weeks after warranty/return window ran out so I was left with an expensive paperweight. Which is a shame because I wanted to like them.
Purchased a system 76 Galago 2 a couple years ago. The motherboard failed just over one year old. System 76 would not replace or give me a discount on a replacement board. Ended up throwing the thing away and will never buy fron them again.
My work has had some pretty poor experiences with their laptops. 2 different models both have had thermal issues where the computer locks up during basic web browsing, agnostic of the Linux distro.
But: imagine having a company selling workstations and tuning your memory a bit too much on the fast side. Having you computer behave incorrectly is much worse than it just being a little slower that a similarly specced computer.
Well, I would love to spend extra money for them to verify and guarantee that the RAM is stable at e.g. DDR5-5600.
However, maybe I am not part of a big group with this one, and since I am currently not in the market for this kind of workstation, maybe the target audience would literally be zero.
Dealing with customers is a PITA and dealing with suppliers is a PITA, at a 20% markup they're doing you a favor.
The one of the reasons bulk discounts exist is that each interaction with a customer is expensive as is the process of finding them.
I mainly sell software but I offer customers hardware to go with it as a favor to them at ~30% markup and it is usually much cheaper than what they can get elsewhere - keeping things under one roof on on one contract makes things easier and we make enough money on the software side we can safely eat potential extra warranty costs on hardware. You'd be surprised but if you let them customers will try to run server software on a 10+ year old laptop and then complain to you when it crashes.
A 25% markup on component cost is shockingly low to me considering the work that must have gone into developing and assembling this. Not to mention the development that goes into the OS. If I had a good use case for this product, I don't think I'd be unhappy with the sticker price.
I can write drivers, but it would take me a long time (I've never written driver so factor in a learning curve). Or I can select parts that linux has drivers for - but again it would take me time. I can assemble a computer, but it will take me time. My time is not free.
AFAIK they are just rebranded "Clevo Computer" systems. On the downside if you order from Clevo you will be asked for upfront payment and then you have to go to court to get your money back :D ... so ordering from system76 gives you at least some assurance that you won't get stiffed.
They are a large enough customer of Clevo that they get consulted on product design and changes. When Clevo ships something to system76, system76 already knows what hardware is there and that they have drivers for it. If you buy elsewhere it might look the same and seem to have the same specs, but Clevo might have put in some chip without linux drivers.
do they ship ISO keyboards meanwhile?
I'd rather buy system76 but US ASCII keyboard is a deal-breaker.
which are the design differences in hardware? I do not see any real differences other than branding which isn't also offered by a bunch of other clevo resellers. having secureboot and system76 firmware would be a huge benefit and in my view the only value-add but that I you can do yourself because it's FOSS and there is no difference in HW
It's perhaps not surprising that the laptops that Clevo ships vs those they make for System76 are different. The fact that system76 ships coreboot and an open EC firmware should be a first clue.
I know they have a keyboard configurator but that isn't a replacement for an ISO layout though.
Also I came across the thread in the past which you linked, where System76 debunks these assumptions. And I totally agree that a lot of work goes into this. But until now I have not actually seen any difference in chipsets? Custom firmware and branded Bios yes, and a lot of hours goes into verifying these things which I'm happy to pay for. But there is afaik no difference in the chips. You can also re-use the firmware / coreboot (e.g. from s76-DARP9 on a clevo-NS50AU) without issues.
This is an annoying amount of effort though and I would rather get this from system76 if they sold it with ISO keyboard than having to do it myself.
> But until now I have not actually seen any difference in chipsets?
System76 is not Apple. I don't know why you'd expect them to have a wholly new chip set.
Maybe you can flash a given Clevo with the "equivalent" system76 firmware. Maybe you can't. I don't think you're going to get support from either if you do that, though.
You can ask them about it; they're pretty great about responding honestly.
they are not if you consider the effort that goes into Pop_OS, firmware, coreboot, custom-BIOS and all the testing that is required for it. It's in many ways a phenomenal deal if this is all you need. And considering that you can re-use these things on a Clevo I'd rather support System76 in what they do.
However if you don't care about Pop_OS and really insist on an ISO keyboard then Clevo (or something like Tuxedo Computers) are better options.
When it comes to hardware a Clevo is a Texedo is a System76 is a Sager (and a bunch of others)
> When it comes to hardware a Clevo is a Texedo is a System76 is a Sager (and a bunch of others)
1. That's not necessarily a fact; I don't know that it's been established one way or the other. There may well be small variances in design at the hardware level
2. In a modern PC, firmware is a gigantic factor in how well an OS works on the hardware. See all the troubles with ACPI for a starting point. Even non-obvious things like fans depend greatly on firmware.[1]
In short, if you want to run Linux, buy a Linux computer, with support for as long as you plan on using it, from a company that supports Linux on the hardware.
If you don't, be prepared for random glitches due to the mismatch between OS and firmware.
> This System76 Thelio Major review sample was configured with the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X 64-core processor, 4 x 32GB DDR5 Micron MTC20F1045S1RC48BA2 DIMMs, 1TB Crucial T700 CT1000T700SSD5 NVMe SSD, and AMD Radeon PRO W7900 graphics.
Graphic card is like $4000. Board for threadripper could easily be $1000.
And you can go to their GitHub repos and view all of the specifications for the hardware (which is under an open hardware license), look at all the driver code, and follow their development of PopOS!
I bought from System76 in large part to support this kind of organization.
It was a bit expensive, but everything "just works", it's super well built, and I've had no issues for 2 years. They definitely know what they're doing
(not affiliated, I just like it)