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,

Comments

Re:Why does Pop! OS exist?

[slashdot_commentator]

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.

Re:Why does Pop! OS exist?

[slashdot_commentator]

I take it you don't remember all of the abandonware distros put out on the netbooks, nettops and cheap desktops a decade ago that where all dead within a year only to be replaced with XP Starter edition.

Nope, don't remember that era, even though I was in my thirties at the time.

There is a reason Dell, HP Zareason, Puget Systems and many others use Ubuntu, they don't have to go through the hassle of maintaining an entire distro, they just provide packages and patches to Canonical and they add it to the repos.

You are aware that Ubuntu uses its base OS off of Debian packages? Ubuntu then tweaks whatever is coming off of Debian, including incorporating proprietary binary code into Ubuntu distributed packages. Its possible that I am wrong, but I believe Pop!OS is running off of Debian distributions as well.

The real reason why System76 wanted to get off Ubuntu was that Ubuntu for the past decade has been ineptly tilting at technical windmills where Ubuntu originally wanted its own Unity desktop, that had nothing directly to do with Gnome or KDE, and then their own rendering layer (Mir?), and eventually just gave up on all of it last(?) year. A lot of Ubuntu users abandoned Ubuntu in the past decade because of this, and System76 decided they couldn't risk losing their customer base being dependent on a poorly(?) managed OS distributor. System76 wanted to standardize its OS in a manner where they weren't dependent upon the whims of Ubuntu, and they're chasing business customers, so they know they don't have to provide the ultimate consumer experience.

So Pop!OS is very basic, its GUI is theirs, build off a lot of other linux windowing code, and they can ensure that their business customers can have a working laptop that works the same way four years from now. Don't think of System76 leaving a stable linux distribution; think of System76 leaving the Ubuntu base product for the Debian base product (that Ubuntu is based on), and Pop!OS tweaks off of Debian, rather than Ubuntu. In any case, I don't care. I just don't like anyone (or company) being pilloried over fanboy ignorance.