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System76 Unveils 'Darter Pro' Linux Laptop With Choice of Ubuntu or Pop!_OS (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Today, System76 unveiled its latest laptop -- the 15.6-inch (full-HD) "Darter Pro." It is thin, but not overly so -- it still has USB-A ports (thankfully). The computer is quite modern, however, as it also has a USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 port. It supports Pop!_OS 18.04 LTS (64-bit), Pop!_OS 18.10 (64-bit), or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (64-bit) operating system. It comes in two variants, with the following processor options: 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8265U: 1.6 up to 3.90 GHz -- 6MB Cache -- 4 Cores -- 8 Threads, or 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8565U: 1.8 up to 4.60 GHz -- 8MB Cache -- 4 Cores -- 8 Threads, with either coupled with Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU, and up to 32GB Dual Channel DDR4 @ 2400 MHz, and M.2 SATA or PCIe NVMe SSD for storage. As for ports, there is USB 3.1 Type-C with Thunderbolt 3, 2 USB 3.0 Type-A, 1 x USB 2.0, SD Card Reader. The company says it will announce the pricing at a later stage,
The reason why System76 puts out its own spin on debian is strategic to the manufacturer. They want to be able to control (and provide support) for the OS, which is intrinsic to building a consumer experience. They don't want to be at the mercy of the whims of debian or ubuntu corp (or microsoft for that matter).
Also, anyone who claims to be technically competent should be aware that linux isn't efficient with laptop power consumption, because it requires driver support (from the chip manufacturer) and kernel/OS support for various sleep modes. If you want a laptop that runs for hours off of battery, you going to get that extra hour from running windows or macOS (because between Microsoft/Apple and the hardware manufacturers, they're plowing a ton of proprietary work into it). If you run linux, then you probably won't be able to run your laptop off of battery for as long. But with Pop!OS, System76 could be incorporating more of those power efficient features by negotiating with the chip manufacturers and the mobo designer/manufacturer, but some of that customized work probably also needs to be in the OS. (I have no idea if System76 is actually doing this.)
You're not satisfied with Pop!OS? Fine, that's still the manufacturer's responsibility. But they aren't putting out Pop!OS out of egotism.
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If someone came out with a machine like this or the Oryx Pro that was completely compatible with macOS, they'd make a lot of people happy. Ship it with a common Linux distro so that it's good to go out of the box, but ensure all the bits play nice with macOS.