cassidyjames

Diluting a brand and trademark is something that can and does happen and does not imply a threat whatsoever. I clarified that multiple times.

And uploading legal filings with private addresses in them and publicly associating with a GitHub user account in response to me opening a GitHub issue is absolutely doxxing. It was not necessary at all, and they refuse to remove it.

They uploaded documents with my personal information in them when it was not even necessary to discuss the issue. They refuse to remove the documents at my request. They continue to draw attention to the post on social media. That's absolutely ban-worthy behavior.

Yeah that would be fine. :)

There was never any legal threat, in fact I try to clarify that repeatedly. The user kept steering it to a poor understanding of trademark law and then publicly uploaded documents with a physical address in response.

This user has been repeatedly disruptive in the subreddit and Slack before this incident, and then they go and publicly doxx someone? There is zero tolerance for that behavior.

The user (who appears to have posted this link, btw, based on recent post history) has been disruptive in the subreddit and Slack in the past, and then literally started publicly doxxing _and_ going around to social media to draw public attention to the post. I messaged them on Slack and they ignored it, continued to post in the thread, and continued posting on social media to draw attention to it. There's zero tolerance for doxxing in the elementary community, so they've been banned in accordance to the elementary Code of Conduct.

Yes, still experimental. We recently merged in the ability to cross-compile Flatpak apps across x86 and ARM, so hopefully that leads to a more official status soon.

They support MBOX exports and have expressed that they will support custom domains. Between the two, it’s hardly lock-in; you can export as often as you like and keep your address.

Yes, because elementary OS is not Ubuntu. In the past, we carried newer versions of GTK or other core libraries, so pretending to be Ubuntu would actually do more harm than good.

However, we have added an `--upstream` or `-u` flag to lsb_release like other Linux-based OSes to point to an upstream release if the downstream release is not supported. I believe this has been adopted for installers of tools like Ruby and Node.

For what it's worth, elementary does not create Epiphany; that's the GNOME browser and is largely a GUI wrapper around WebKit, the exact same engine as in Safari.

AppCenter is a way to serve the app developers who were already attempting to target the OS while also enabling both them and elementary to cover (some) costs.

You realize elementary has created the entire Pantheon desktop environment, right? So, "It's just their desktop environment with their stylesheet, their apps, and the AppCenter ecosystem," is basically what you are saying. In which case, yeah, that's exactly what elementary OS is.

For what it's worth, that was my personal response and not anything official or reviewed by System76 "the company." I try to retain a bit of autonomy while working for Sytem76.

I agree that my tone may have been a little unprofessional itself, and that's on me. It has just been a frustrating time trying to do what's best for both our customers and the Linux ecosystem at large, and then being raked across the coals for it with a misleading and seemingly emotional blog post from a core Red Hat desktop employee and high-profile GNOME contributor. It's just not a fun thing to wake up to when you're also actively working with the guy on his other projects and contributing to GNOME itself, you know?

Just curious, what laptop do you have? I'm always open to hearing constructive criticism like this, and it's something we've been more aggressively addressing with recent products. But I'd love to know which product it is so I can share that feedback with our team.

And it's been something we've been working on for more than two years. Building a US-based manufacturing plant from the ground up is a long process, but it will be worth it in the end. You can come by the factory in Denver, Colorado and see where we are! The entire company is relocating to the factory in June, and we're currently building our latest prototypes designed by the team.

What do you mean by "products"? Is it a particular combination of a specific barebones Clevo laptop installed with specific components (make+model) picked by System76?

It's kind of a case-by-case basis. But some products, like the Galago Pro and new Oryx Pro, are the result of years of working with our partners to even develop a certain class of computer. For a long time, Clevo wasn't even interested in a thin and light aluminum machine (much less a sane HiDPI resolution), but we worked with them to get that into production. The display resolution in particular was a win for us, as they had originally planned to go with a 3840×2160 display, but at 13", it was too-dense for most of our customers without fractional scaling. So we had them source a 3200×1800 display, which is just right. And when our customers and fans wanted a slimmer bezel on that machine, we released the 14" version with the same exact chassis but a bigger display and smaller bezels.

What do you mean by "ensure all components are working together"? Do you mean check whether a component is already supported by linux and in case the support is iffy the System76 staff picks some other component (make+model) that's better supported?

Some components—like a DAC or Ethernet chipset—are not always directly chosen by System76; it's a decision our partners make when the product goes into production. Much of the time those components work perfectly fine out of the box in Linux, but sometimes it requires some firmware or driver work to get it working perfectly, usually if the component itself was only originally developed for and tested against Windows.

Sometimes we have to make hard decisions like that where the upstream manufacturer insists on a feature in order to get a certain class of design (because then they can resell it to Windows companies and have it be an extra selling point). That sort of thing is happening less and less, though, as we continue to do well and help design successful products.

Yeah, this is fair. One nit-pick is that the System76 firmware tool is not proprietary at all; the blobs themselves are (just like almost every other consumer product), but the firmware updater is all completely open source. It's just not LVFS.

We hope to make this all a moot point with completely open firmware in the future, but that's a long and difficult road we're on.

I don't think I can share intimate details, but we are designing the products, manufacturing the chassis and some internal components, and assembling the products all in Denver, CO.

System76 UX architect here!

This vastly trivializes the work System76 does for months and sometimes years leading up to a product release. We don't simply take an off-the-shelf product that already exists, throw an OS on it, and sell it.

System76 works with upstream manufacturers (like, yes, Clevo for laptops) to determine what types of products to develop, including their specifications, design, etc. for months up to a release. These products do not exist before we enter into these conversations.

Once that has been determined, designed, and goes into production, we start on firmware. We ensure all components are working together and with the Linux kernel (often requiring changes to the components' low level interactions with the OS, since the upstream components themselves are often manufactured with the assumption they will be used by Windows).

Once that is complete, we test with Ubuntu and Pop!_OS specifically, ensuring the OS is working perfectly with the hardware. If there are any OS-specific changes to be done, we write that behavior into Pop!_OS and/or our "driver" which is preloaded on all machines (and available in any Ubuntu-based distro, Arch, Fedora, etc.), with the intent to upstream that into Ubuntu, GNOME, and/or Linux itself as quickly as possible. When this is more generic like ensuring HiDPI works great out of the box, this actually ends up benefiting competitors like Dell's XPS 13 probably as much as it benefits us, but we put in the effort to file the bugs, track them, write the code, and get it upstreamed.

Once all of that is complete, we finally offer it for purchase and market it with all of our pretty photographs, sales pages, etc.

What ends up happening, then, is Clevo offers a machine with a similar-looking chassis for sale as a barebones laptop. This is the result partially of the decision making System76 has made for what to produce in the first place. These products, however, do not contain any of the firmware or driver work that System76 has invested in. They do benefit from the nice photography and advertising System76 has done, and since they look similar, people assume they're going to get the same machine for cheaper "directly from the manufacturer."

Edit: regardless, this is a bit beside the point of the linked blog post, and is also becoming less and less true as we work on designing and manufacturing our products completely in-house.

Hrm, that's strange and I haven't heard that being a widespread issue; thousands of customers have updated without issue. I'd open a support case so someone can get that sorted out for you.

Yes, just like every consumer computer at this point. But we're working on that. ;)

I'm literally on the factory floor right now, working with our designers and CEO on upcoming product designs. There's an area populated with a few dozen iterations of unreleased prototypes from the past couple of years, a couple of 3D printers running for prototype parts, as well as a laser cutting acrylic for new prototypes chassis today.

We're doing this work in-house, right here in Denver, Colorado.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience with support. We do still offer a choice between Ubuntu and Pop!_OS right from the site, but we also are focusing our efforts on making better products. And a large part of that (which we hear from our customers every day) is in the software experience. You're always welcome to install whatever you want on your machine, and we'll do our best to help you out with that.

Never say never! We listen to feedback. :)

We're not actively hiring for anything specific, but we accept interesting applications regardless. See https://system76.com/careers

System76 employee here! We do have a number of HiDPI models.

Galago Pro (https://system76.com/laptops/galago) is probably our most popular, and its resolution is 3200×1800—not technically 4K, but the right resolution for that small of display.

Oryx Pro usually has a 4K HiDPI option, but it looks like it's currently sold out. Our WS models also have 4K options, but they're pretty specialized machines.

Yep! Jeremy (jackpot51) is the lead developer. https://github.com/jackpot51

I asked David Jordan, the engineer working on the firmware updater.

Not only aren't updates initiated without permission, I wrote the code to make that literally impossible without changes to the installed python code.

The code is available at https://github.com/pop-os/system76-driver and https://github.com/system76/firmware-update

System76 employee here. I suppose the "automatic" could be re-worded; the data is automatically pushed to the machine but then the user always opts into the actual install.

But on the other hand, System76 customers are trusting that System76 hasn't been hacked or coerced to ship malicious firmware from the factory in the first place. These updates are signed and verified with industry best practices.

jackpot51 (the System76 engineer currently working on this) could probably detail it better than I can, though.

There were plenty of electric cars before the Model S. You might say that "electric cars" was a solved problem space. Around that time, Tesla was "selling rebadged European sports cars" in low quantities as a proof of concept. Of course there's no way they could beat GM and what their mountains of cash could put out. But Tesla steadily built out their Model S production, and rapidly became the poster child for the viability of electric cars. They have been extremely successful since.

I think it's entirely possible that a similar situation can happen in the PC space, and System76 believe they're positioned to do it.

Disclaimer, I do happen to be a web developer at System76. But the argument stands; you can disagree that System76 has the ability to execute on this vision, but after building a very successful business around Linux computers for 11 years, I happen to believe it's going to happen.

System76 employee here! Up to 32 GB. ;)

System76 employee (and HiDPI... enthusiast?) here! It does not need non-integer scaling. It's 3200x1800, which is like 1600x900 pixel-doubled. A great resolution for that physical size. This is also why you don't hear us talking about "4K" on that display, because that'd actually be too many pixels and require non-integer scaling for a usable UI.