Even as someone who doesn't use anything System76, I truly appreciate all of their contributions.
Kinda tangential but I wonder, as successful as they've been in their niche (I presume, based on how prolific the branding is) I wonder if they would be better positioned to make a Linux phone where the others have fallen flat? I loved my PinePhone but as a novelty mini-AIO PC more than a phone. I doubt they'd want to step onto that minefield, but I wouldn't be able to help but get excited if such a project ever materialized.
As a customer of System76 since at least ~2014, (many machines) I dont like them as a company ;
- They wanted $90 for a replacement laptop power supply cable
- They wanted money to replace screws that that fell off and were clicking around in the body of the machine
- They took the exact same model/design (from CLIO) of machine in the same release year and changed the interface for the LCD screen mid-stream, so a newly ordered screen for machine would not connect because they changed the ribbon cable type and told me to kick rocks
The machines had extremely flimsy cases and the fan fins often broke...
I loved running linux on them for the value for the guts you got on their machines, but their support fucking sucked. I abandoned them a few years ago.
I still have one of their machines here - and its firmware failed and its unsuable.
> They took the exact same model/design (from CLIO) of machine in the same release year and changed the interface for the LCD screen mid-stream, so a newly ordered screen for machine would not connect because they changed the ribbon cable type and told me to kick rocks
I don't understand what happened here. Did you buy clevo (clio?) parts and expect it to be compatible with what they shipped you?
>"Did you buy clevo (clio?) parts and expect it to be compatible with what they shipped you?"
NO. the OEM for the first sets of S76 laptops were a spec buy from S76 to Clio?Clivo? - taiwanese laptop mfr who makes spec built kit....
The problem was that S76 wanted strong guts, but a lower price point to lure Linux Savvy buyer... and the machines they had built, while the guts were strong - the casing was weak and the build quality poor... (this is why Apple makes their machines out of Aluminum rather than plastic. Which is great one many levels, but there are also cons with using aluminum in anything...)
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>"What do I recommend"
Currently on a flagship HP Omen Gaming machine - but still this exhibits hardware problems - this machine is ~$3,000 and I am on my third one with the previous two having mainboard failures of different causes...
But HPE Executive support is probably the best computer support I have received barring COMPAQ (whom HPE acquired in the late '90s... - COMPAQ support was legendary)
so - I am still paying for awesome guts - but even these Omen laptops still have a shitty case design...
They have a top aluminum panel for the KB - but the under panel is a flimsy plastic BS - and they still use undersized screws which are prone to fall out...
But the mainboard design is pretty bad ass.
Dual SSD slots - good venting (even though the machine has problems on any sof surface (like a blanket or a bed) because the venting is bottom fans venting air up, but when stiffled by a blanket/bed/pillow - it makes the machine overheat...
And W11 is not help in that area - power mgmt in W11 is atrocious from a subjective perspective - but if you want powerful gut and dont care about the above - then an HP Omen gaming machine with great graphics and proc and an AI capable GPU (although I havent used that much yet) is bad ass - couple that with USB powered external monitors and you have a three-screen awesome machine that is light and fits in any backpack.
but the legacy of apple is really the aluminum chassis...
But strong guts are more important to me for compute/$
Yes, building a cell phone is simply something a small group of people cannot do successfully. I used to develop software for Openmoko phones, the N900, and other early Linux phones. Those projects had several decedent projects, all of which failed. There are several show-stoppers: 1) chip vendors won't talk to you if you are proposing to build a few thousand phones. 2) These projects never produce several iterations of prototypes that are tested by a significant number of users, so if they ever do ship a phone, there are terrible hardware faults. Fun fact: end users are not good at adding additional surface-mount components to cure these problems. 3) Unless you are making an Android phone, or at least an Android-compatible phone, none of the major apps will be available, and your customer base will be limited to the small fraction of the population that cares about privacy. So you'll never see economies of scale. 4) It will take longer than expected to bring the phone to the market, so even if you manage to build something, the hardware will be several generations behind what consumers expect. 5) Power management is hard.
I was all in on OpenMoko before I knew anything about these topics. First big disappointment in terms of hardware projects. Cool that you worked on that. I'm less optimistic on projects now but a lot respect for people who tried to do that work.
Still waiting years for my FxTec. By the time it arrives I asssume I will be unimpressed with a snapdragon 662. Qualcom EOLed the snapdragon 835 it was originally based on, so mid-way, they had to redesign around a newer but lower spec chip. The original chip was a high end but from 2017. Imagine getting that, new, in 2023 or 2024.
In some ways I guess I don't care since I'm on a pixel 4a 5g just for the headphone jack. But I also only paid about 150 or 200 for it.
Kinda tangential but I wonder, as successful as they've been in their niche (I presume, based on how prolific the branding is) I wonder if they would be better positioned to make a Linux phone where the others have fallen flat? I loved my PinePhone but as a novelty mini-AIO PC more than a phone. I doubt they'd want to step onto that minefield, but I wouldn't be able to help but get excited if such a project ever materialized.