System76 Plans Its Own Open Hardware Laptop, and a New Desktop Environment Written in Rust (linux-magazine.com) 47
Linux Magazine argues that System76's Pop!_OS offers "something rare: a commercial distribution that was integrated into the hardware, with utilities designed specifically for System76 computers and keyboards."
The only other example of an integrated commercial distro of which I am aware is Purism, a company in the same niche... With hardware and software coming from the same source — what business calls vertical integration — distributions like System76/Pop!_OS offer Linux users their first experiences with what Windows and macOS users have always enjoyed — to say nothing of the closest they can currently get to open hardware. Could Linux be finally becoming mainstream at last?
They interviewed System76 CEO Carl Richell (along with a marketing director and media relations manager), who remembered how System76 was actually founded in Carl's basement around 2005: He wanted to show the world how far Linux and open source software had come by delivering it preinstalled on high-quality computers backed by caring, knowledgeable customer support. Carl felt that making Linux computers that highlight the work of the community would be a great way to introduce the broader public to open source technology and its potential...
LM: What other hardware might System76 offer in the future?
S76: We are in the research and development process of designing our own in-house laptop. We'll eventually refresh our Meerkat mini desktop with a new Thelio-style aesthetic. That project will start sometime after our first in-house laptops start shipping. [In addition,] Launch keyboards and the System76 Keyboard Configurator work on macOS and Windows! We've also prepared ISO layouts for most Launch models but don't have a time frame for release.
LM: What are you willing to say at this point about the company's future directions?
S76: We're developing COSMIC DE — a desktop environment written in Rust — as well as a prototype for an open hardware laptop manufactured in-house. Finally, Nebula, a line of computer cases based on Thelio desktops will be arriving in the coming months.
My favorite line from the interview? "Seeing a flat sheet of aluminum transformed into a beautiful desktop is strikingly rewarding."
They interviewed System76 CEO Carl Richell (along with a marketing director and media relations manager), who remembered how System76 was actually founded in Carl's basement around 2005: He wanted to show the world how far Linux and open source software had come by delivering it preinstalled on high-quality computers backed by caring, knowledgeable customer support. Carl felt that making Linux computers that highlight the work of the community would be a great way to introduce the broader public to open source technology and its potential...
LM: What other hardware might System76 offer in the future?
S76: We are in the research and development process of designing our own in-house laptop. We'll eventually refresh our Meerkat mini desktop with a new Thelio-style aesthetic. That project will start sometime after our first in-house laptops start shipping. [In addition,] Launch keyboards and the System76 Keyboard Configurator work on macOS and Windows! We've also prepared ISO layouts for most Launch models but don't have a time frame for release.
LM: What are you willing to say at this point about the company's future directions?
S76: We're developing COSMIC DE — a desktop environment written in Rust — as well as a prototype for an open hardware laptop manufactured in-house. Finally, Nebula, a line of computer cases based on Thelio desktops will be arriving in the coming months.
My favorite line from the interview? "Seeing a flat sheet of aluminum transformed into a beautiful desktop is strikingly rewarding."
wat (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a warmed over version of Ubuntu. It's not "integrated into the hardware" any more than any other OS, that's not a thing. It does "integrate with the hardware" slightly better out of the box, but you can achieve the same thing easily enough without Pop!.
Re:wat (Score:4, Interesting)
What you can achieve with hobbyism isn't relevant if you don't want to be a hobbyist. I don't think System76 is large enough or has enough linked revenue to make a non hobbyist Linux ecosystem though.
I think the only companies who have the opportunity (but not the will) to launch non hobbyist Linux ecosystems are Valve and Amazon. Valve seems happy to stick to its niche and Amazon is probably burned out on hardware.
Google is already doing it of course and I really like the architecture of ChromeOS/Crostini but alas it comes with customer datamining.
Re: (Score:2)
System76 may not be large enough, but their products that I've seen are definitely big and heavy.
Re: (Score:1)
It's not "integrated into the hardware" any more than any other OS
Invasion of the GPL3 Body Snatchers
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Indeed. This is really nonsense. Have a look at https://linux-laptop.net/ [linux-laptop.net] before selecting one and you will be fine.
The Promised Land (Score:2)
I had been locked to Apple since they started using Intel but finally made the jump to POP-OS when I got into machine learning but got fed up with spending days setting up Nvidia cards to run TF.
I bought the System76 hardware and the ML stuff just worked. No pain - just type
sudo apt install tensorflow-cuda-latest
comically pain-free.
And have never looked back. Steam means I can run my games, the one thing I do miss is Filemaker Pro for its RAD demonstration properties.
Despite the fact that I have given them
Welp... (Score:1)
wh00h00 witten in rust!!!1! (Score:2, Interesting)
Welp, at least it is a new development, not the rust kids pissing in someone else's stew.
But that is also why it immediately falls flat: The selling point of "we reinveted the wheel using a different programming language" is naive dabbler territory. It just doesn't add anything but a mildly warm fuzzy feeling to some afficionados (most of whom haven't actually used the language, as per stackoverflow "surveys"), and alienation in anyone used to the usual workflows because they have to learn a new language j
Re: (Score:1)
I don't know. If I wanted to write a new DE, I would use .Net and C#, not because the language is new, but because it's very easy to learn and as a managed language, it offers the same security advantages as Rust. I'd code exclusively to Wayland not X. That thing's go to die, frankly.
But then, some people would still accuse me of just writing a DE so I can try out a new technology. But frankly, Linux DEs are so incredibly unstable and high DPI monitor support so garbage as to have me fleeing back to Win
Re: wh00h00 witten in rust!!!1! (Score:2)
I started with C# but now I just do everything in rust. C# is in and of itself indeed a decent language, but I've grown to vastly prefer rust for a few reasons:
- Never any confusion of whether something can return null
- Way more obvious when a function can return an error
- Handling the above two is so much easier, especially given how verbose exception handling is
- No inheritance or any of the bullshit baggage it carries
- Whether something is a deep or shallow copy is always dead obvious, namely because...
-
Re: (Score:2)
Although, I don't get why inheritance is a problem...I've done object oriented programming to intermediate level at least, and saw inheritance as highly useful and valuable. I'd be curious to hear a rebuttal. is th
Re: (Score:2)
Although, I don't get why inheritance is a problem...I've done object oriented programming to intermediate level at least, and saw inheritance as highly useful and valuable. I'd be curious to hear a rebuttal. is that a criticism of C# or rust? Not getting your drift there.
It's more a rant against OOP. It depends on what kind of work you do, but the kind of work I've been doing means I have to stitch numerous libraries together. In OOP that very often means, among other things, abstract classes, which often leave you desiring the ability to inherit from more than one, in addition to super classes making different assumptions about what something else along the chain is intending, and the fact that it's often hard to tell what along that chain doesn't handle concurrency well,
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
the whole versionitis of .net is pure vendor lock-in.
Sorry, what? Versionitis? Vendor lock in? .Net has been open source for a while, and maintains backwards compatibility.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok. Look at the release cycles. Release cycles of all software have shrunk from years to months or even weeks. So, beyond security updates, the rapid release cycles are for the benefit of the writers of the software, not the users. BE HONEST.
Keeps their brand in your face, keeps you reporting home to download the software, they keep adding more "telemetry" (surveillance). Any informed and honest evaluation of rapid Software leads to the conclusion th
Re: (Score:1)
Rust also has a really high learning curve. BTW C# has had non-nullable reference types for a while now. Inheritance is not 'baggage' for me, it's a feature!
Anyway, the merits of the language is not my point.
Re: (Score:1)
Also, since .Net Core, you can bundle all the bits you need with your app, no .net component needs to exist on the user's machines. A non-framework dependent install.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, that's just like, your opinion, man.
As for DE instability and inability to handle multiple monitors, that's my experience across many distros and DEs. But I do expect Linux users to claim it never happened. They do tend to be "true believers."
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I don't really care if Rustaceans use Rust to make something new, but the fact that they think "written in Rust" is a key selling point tells me their DE will be mediocre at best. Only the politically obsessed care what language it's written in. Everyone else just wants something that works.
Re: (Score:2)
Support your Linux ecosystem (Score:4, Informative)
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If you like their hardware offerings then I say you should vote for a Linux specialist with your dollars, even if you're butthurt over Rust's superiority over C++.
Their hardware is mediocre at best, so if you like that, well you know the rest. Making a new DE is a waste of time, and therefore money, and therefore it's just making their mediocre hardware more expensive. It's a bad value proposition.
Re: Support your Linux ecosystem (Score:2)
Yeah. Like their desktop towers. No matter the "size" Thelios system you buy, it has no (0) 3.5" hdd slots. I ended up with a (shitty, unfortunately) Dell Precision because of this. As proprietary as that system is, it can hold 8 3.5" drives OR 2.5".
Sorry guys, I need plenty of bulk storage.
Yet another desktop enviornment (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What do you mean? Desktops are awesome. The more the merrier!
What pressing free software issues do you think they're ignoring?
Re: (Score:2)
If the hardware is good I don't care what else they waste their time on. Unfortunately their current line up is extremely generic and average. Intel furnaces, mediocre specs, only basic accessories.
Re: (Score:1)
I have a shiny new hammer, so I must make new wheels that fulfill exactly the same purposes as the old ones while having different bearing and axle sizes.
Hurray for me accomplishing nothing new! I may even have slightly more job security and less free time.
Redox (Score:1)
meh (Score:2, Troll)
Apple had a vision and strategy that resulted in becoming one of the richest companies in the world. In order to achieve their goal, they focused on the user experience. From there, everything else came.
I don't hear that from System76. What I hear is techno babble. Linux nerds making things for Linux nerds. Grandma doesn't give a shit about open hardware and Rust and sheets of aluminum. But hey, I guess there's enough of a market to make a profit selling to a niche.
I'm predicting in 5 years we hear the anno
Re:meh (Score:4, Interesting)
Apple had that focus for years and only managed to have a small niche. Only lucking out on the iPod and segueing that into the iPhone allowed ecosystem monopoly building success (combined with Microsoft being incompetent and Google having customer datamining being a millstone around their neck, a very profitable millstone for as long as it lasts).
The consumer electronic market is much more mature now, there is nothing for System76 to luck out on. Want to build a new ecosystem? Bring 100 Billion dollars and expect years worth of losses.
I don't like vertical integration (Score:3)
Other commenters are saying it's not so vertical, but if they think that's a selling point they're dead wrong, at least for me.
VI puts us back in the world of "this game is only for Atari", which is where game consoles still are. I don't want a game console. I prefer hardware to be a standard, and software to run on it like infrastructure. I believe it promotes a healthier competitive environment. The barrier to competing in hardware is too high for most people. With standard hardware, software engineers can blow the world away with only a few thousand dollars invested. If the PC space were fragmented by a bunch of VI'd platforms, arguably you never would have gotten Linux.
The idea that VI is more robust doesn't seem to pan out either. I've seen plenty of Macs crash. Heck, their "pinwheel" is known even to people who aren't Mac users.
Re: (Score:2)
Chromebooks have a high level of vertical integration (the hardware is basically a licensed design from Google, not independent). Yet Chromebooks are some of the most open systems there are and along with Windows and x86 servers help keep open computing hardware alive
I dislike vertical integration but if Apple doesn't get better vertically integrated competition, open consumer computing is dead (governments aren't going to be heavy handed enough to stop this, this is a Standard Oil level monopoly forming an
Re: (Score:2)
I dislike vertical integration but if Apple doesn't get better vertically integrated competition,
I don't think that's true. Apple OS was clearly ahead of everything else in 2010, but since then everything else has caught up. Linux Mint is extremely usable as a desktop environment now, whereas Apple has degraded (ie, prompts you to log in every once in a while).
Don't even ask me what Microsoft is doing with Windows.
Re: (Score:2)
The great thing about Vertical Integration is that when someone discovers how to lock up a Mac by typing file:/// into Safari, you can go round the Apple Store and lock up every single machine in there because they all have the exact same bug.
Re: I don't like vertical integration (Score:2)
Love some System76, but. . . (Score:2)
I lurv my Thelio, and I also got a Lemur Pro that is generally working well. I'm pretty loyal to System76 at this point. However. . .
They do seem to take ages to accomplish anything with hardware R&D. I mean, I'm sure there are multiple reasons for that; I know that System76 isn't Apple. The gap between everything they want to do with hardware and what they have the actual resources to accomplish is understandable-but-frustrating.
When it comes to software though, I have no idea what they're even try
Innovating what the world doesn't need (Score:2)
If they have so much money, they could just send all their employees to Cancun for a week. There is no need to blow it all on a desktop manager written in Rust.
Welp... (Score:1)
iT wIlL cHaNgE tEh wUrLd!!1 (Score:2)
If I had a nickel for every time I heard this.
Ii don't doubt that a lot of work was put onto this, and the experience may be very good or even above average, but it's going to remain a niche product.
*MAYBE* if these could be had at your local Walmart, it might have a chance at taking off, but (IIRC) this was already attempted several years ago with PCs running "Lindows".
Never Been a POP_OS fan (Score:2)
Sounds like a bunch of techo babble from CEO looking for venture capital. MacOS is what it is, because they ONLY support the small amount of hardware that they produce. I think the POP_IS UI is ugly and it actually makes it harder to work. It's noticeably slower on older hardware vs say Ubuntu. The apple thing they have going for them is that their hardware is as overpriced as apple. If I'm going to pay that kind of $$ I'd rather buy apple. BTW X64 macs run Linux very well, so if you want an overp
so it actually is an excellent system (Score:1)
I'm not the type of Linux users who likes to fiddle around and spend time on tuning the computer. I want things to work. And work well. And easy. Pop!_OS is great for that. After only 25y+ Linux using I can honestly say this is the first distro that runs with the ease and smoothness of an Apple with the freedom and versatility of a Linux box. Cosmic desktop is essential to this experience. I don't care about the programming language, I never see that part.