Linux PC Maker System76 Plans To Design And Manufacture Its Own Hardware (liliputing.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Liliputing: System76 is one of only a handful of PC vendors that exclusively sells computers with Linux-based software. Up until now, that's meant the company has chosen hardware that it could guarantee would work well with custom firmware and the Ubuntu Linux operating system... Starting in 2018 though, you may be able to buy a System76 computer that was designed and built in-house... CAD files for System76 computers will be open source, allowing anyone with the appropriate skills and equipment to build or modify their own cases based on the company's designs.
"We're prototyping with acrylic and moving to metal soon," the company says in a blog post, adding "Our first in-house designed and manufactured desktops will ship next year. Laptops are more complex and will follow much later."

Comments

What a weird add

[locater16]

I mean, really it's an odd way to sneak an ad onto /.

I mean, I'm so glad these new computer cases will be compatible with Linux. Really. I accidentally bought a case one time that wasn't, couldn't install Linux Mint or any other distro. Worked with Freebsd, but not Linux. Fortunately this will solve this well known problem.

Re:What a weird add

[hcs_$reboot]

To be fair, unlike Apple, MS and the main PC makers (dell, hp, asus, ...) there isn't much information about Linux-only manufacturers ; being informed like that, once in a while, keeps us aware that there are alternatives...

Re:What a weird add

[Hognoxious]

Which of those can you prototype in acrylic?

That one.

Re: Time to start a pool

[Anonymous Coward]

I call your bet. $1000 USD they are still around in six months. Reply with a registered account if you're interested and I'll log in and pm you with details.

Re: Don't hold your breath...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't hold your breath, why? Designing hardware is hard? Costs? Knowhow? Documentation on the chipsets?

None of this is hard, or an unknown, just hire the right people and contractors (yes, I do this stuff for a living). But I'm curious as to what you were thinking the barrier is...

Cases, not electronics

[Gravis Zero]

I RTFA and the source article and I didn't see anything to indicate they would be designing their own electronics. Instead, it seems like they will be building their own computer cases. Frankly, computer cases are far less important than the electronics that reside inside them. Having the CAD files to customize is nice but when their is a backdoor in every new x86 chip, it's kinda like putting on sunblock to protect your skin from the sun as you stare down a civilization ending 10000 meter tsunami wave.

Re:Cases, not electronics

[DontBeAMoran]

Raspberry Pi to the rescue!

I wish it were sarcasm, but who can predict the future at this point.

Nice to see

[poor_boi]

I live in Colorado where Sys76 is based. The original post may read like an ad, and my comment may sound like a shill, but check my post history. I'm not shill, I'm a real life Sys76 customer. Sys76 is committed to Linux on well-designed desktop/laptop systems. They have a legit business that focuses on systems designed for HPC and deep learning. I don't think they're super focused on mainstream consumer audience right now. From what I've seen they're really on the prosumer/commercial side of things -- looking to cash in on the deep learning craze, and put capable hardware and OS stack in the hands of interested people who want form-factors that fit into daily life. I'm impressed with their last-gen offerings, and I really look forward to what they'll be doing next.
tl;dr: real company, real product. Keep an eye on this.

Re: Don't hold your breath...

[DontBeAMoran]

Of course designing hardware is hard! Look at Apple! Even with more money in the bank than small countries they are incapable of updating their computers properly every year! Hell, in 2014 they even downgraded the Mac mini! That's how hard it is to design hardware!

Baddly worded summary

[DrYak]

The summary is badly worder.

The thing is :

up until now System76 were selling
- laptops which were simply re-branded laptops from other brand, to which they changed firmware and OS to a more free option
- desktop which were mostly of the shelf beige-boxes
i.e.: they were selling mostly 3rd party hardware

starting from next year, they also want :
- laptop that they make themselves (well, most likely they will be still produced in china. but the idea is that the models are now made by System76. Not Lenovo models with an alternate firmware and OS).
This is interesting because in the end it will enable them to better choose the component inside the laptop for Linux compatibility (avoid too much weird embed controllers)
- desktop designed by themselves too. (that won't be a much big change from the current beige box trend. A motherboard is still a motherboard).
but at least it will help with brand identity and will also help testing their design pipeline on a smaller scale before tackling the laptops.

Their blog post make it clearer (I swear I didn't click TFA's link ! I just clicked last week, when it was on Phoronix. Am I still /.-worthy ? :-D )
Sadly the summery sounds like you need desktop cases specially made compatible with Linux.

Re:Baddly worded summary

[LWATCDR]

Really kind of sad that this is called making your own computer.
So system 76 is going to go to Foxconn, ASUS, MSI or some other OEM and have them make laptops for them. For desktops they will probably make their own case and go to Gigabyte, ASUS, ASUS or some other OEM and buy a motherboard.
It used to be that "making" your own computer actually made the CPU. Companies like DEC, CDC, IBM, Data General, Ti, HP and so one all made their own CPUs sometimes several different models.
So IC based CPUs came along. Then making your own computer meant making the motherboard and often the OS. Kaypro, Atari, Commodore, RadioShack, and so on.
Today it means making the case.
The only real computer companies left in the none mobile world seem to be IBM and Sun. Maybe Apple, HP, and Dell if you take the making your own motherboards as being good enough. The rest are just putting stuff in boxes

Re:Baddly worded summary

[hey!]

I suspect this may enable them to lower their prices or increase their margins.

Linux support on popular high-end hardware is close to flawless -- or becomes so after that hardware has been out for a year or so. But if you start looking at the plethora of low end laptops, especially, you are in for a world of minor headaches. I find it takes me about a week of research to get a cheap, relatively new laptop working flawlessly. Sometimes the fixes Google turns up for your model don't work because you have a different revision number. Most people, if they attempted to install Linux onto a recent, low-end laptop, would find a lot of things not working, like sound, or keyboard special keys. It's not rocket science to fix, but for them it might as well be.

This is not what 99% of the world signs on for when they buy a laptop, so it makes sense for someone to have a business that does this for people. But if you're in the business of doing that, you have to pay yourself for your labor. That means you can compete at rock bottom prices because that's where you're starting from in your costs; and in any case starting with a better quality device minimizes the work you have to do dealing with stuff like broken ACPI firmware.

Which means when you count the cost of your value added, it's really hard to sell a rebranded laptop at a competitive price. Selling high quality rebranded hardware at relatively high prices and small profits may be a way to bootstrap your business, but the only way to get serious volume sales at a profit is going to be to have a computer manufactured to your specifications.

Re:Baddly worded summary

[LWATCDR]

If they are going to produce X/86 desktops then they would be dumb to produce their own motherboard.
Lots of companies already make very good X/86 motherboards for both Intel and AMD. What can they do better? Even if the want to tweak the motherboard OEMs can do that for them.
Now if they intend to build their own motherboards....
Well that could be the death of the company. They would have to compete with people that make good products already.

Microsoft tax

[DrYak]

I understand wanting to support the Linux community, but I thought one of the "big advantages" of Linux was that it was cheaper? Yet here, even without the Microsoft tax, it costs a lot more.

The thing is, unlike your custom self-build linux workstation, linux laptops not only come *without the Microsoft tax* (making them a bit cheaper), they also come *without the Bloatware/Crapware bonus* (making them not heavily subsidized by "Punch the Monkey to win big prizes !" and "Let's siphon all your data straight to all the marketeer we an find".

They also don't come with the *integrated by chinese almost-slave labour rebate*.
Laptop tend to be complex and weird (embed controllers, etc.) which requires a tiny bit of adaptation to make them linux-worthy.

- When you buy a big popular brand like Lenovo's Thinkpad Ts, Dell's Lattitude, etc. someone else would have done the debugging already (see ressources like Thinkwiki) and by that time it'll probably be upstream in vanilla kernel and standard distros. So you can probably just pop in a CD of Ubuntu or Linux Mint and it will install flawlessly.

- When you start with less popular manufacturer, you'd be in for a few small surprise : screen not turning on, kernel crashing at boot when trying to enumerate hardware, UEFI-Secure refusing the signature of your bootloader's shim, etc. You could be needed fixes in the firmware and/or workaround patched in the kernel. It might something really simple (just hacking a bit some settings).
But even that "simple" will by done by some who isn't paid in cents per day range.

So it adds up to the costs.