[trengrj]

> Why do they keep marketing Ubuntu as a different OS? The is confusing to people who don't realize that it's literally just a customized Debian.

Why do they keep marketing Debian as a different OS? It is literally just Linux and some GNU system components cobbled together.

[_emacsomancer_]

Indeed, why don't they actually put Linux front and centre, since by this point in time it should be a fairly well recognised name. They could then say something about Pop_OS in term of their own customisation if they like, but I find the down-playing of Linux a bit odd, especially as they do note the case design as including "the solar system at the time of the Unix Epoch", which is a nice Vingian touch.

[ryukafalz]

Linux is a fairly well-recognized name by this point, but what recognition it does have tends to have "technical" associations.

If I suggest running Linux to some of my friends, they'll immediately disregard it as something they wouldn't be able to use, possibly because they know I run it and associate it with being a techie. I suspect I would get a very different reaction if I showed them something like elementary OS without even mentioning the word Linux.

[_emacsomancer_]

Perhaps. But what if you mention "Pop" "<bang>" "<underscore>" "OS"?

[3rdAccount]

Let's be honest here. Everybody familiar with System76 (slight exaggeration, but mostly correct) is somebody looking outside the box. There's a good chance they already use Linux and understand Pop is just a customized distro. These systems are largely marketed to the power user who doesn't want to build their own PC. In other words, someone who wants to pay a fair price for a good Linux laptop with functioning hardware and a company to support it. They know it won't have bleeding edge performance, but should have good performance. They are comfortable with computers and probably know Windows and a few Linux distros like Ubuntu, RHEL, Arch...etc.

[_emacsomancer_]

I still think Pop!_OS is not a household name even among the smaller set of people you refer to.

[3rdAccount]

Yea, but I clicked around and did a quick Google to find out it's a custom distro. Not too hard, but I guess they could make that easier.

[Fomite]

I am their target customer (I recently bought a very similar machine to these from Boxx), and I have no idea what Pop!_OS is. I can guess, based on the 18.something LTS that it's a Ubuntu derivative, but I don't know what that involves.

[_emacsomancer_]

I'm pretty sure it's an add-on repo to Ubuntu which contains customisation of GNOME Shell and some System76-specific firmware stuff. (I have a System76 desktop from a few years back, but haven't run Ubuntu or System76's custom repo for some time on it, so I'm not 100% certain.)

[Fomite]

Yeah, as far as I can tell, that's what it seems to be. But there's some breathless hype stuff about it that's obfuscating stuff on their site even though I'm their target audience.

[slededit]

APT and dpkg really makes it different. Changes the whole character vs say redhat and their RPMs.