[agundy]

It sounds like they are taking a big bet on rewriting large components of the OS custom for Pop OS in Rust. I wish them the best but it sounds like a big commitment and I’m holding my breath for them to succeed.

I’m curious how System76 sees Pop_OS fitting into their business model which is primarily hardware.

[JoBrad]

Apple found business value in providing an OS that worked well with their hardware. I imagine the System 76 team see similar value. I recently installed it on an old ThinkCentre, and have been very pleased with it.

[abnercoimbre]

How did Bluetooth turn out for ya? I installed the OS on a ROG Zephyrus (Windows gaming laptop) and everything works beautifully (even WiFi) except for Bluetooth. It simply stopped working after a while.

[CoastalCoder]

Bluetooth works fine for me on both System76 Thelio and my Lenovo Legion laptop.

Well, except for the crappy BT audio, but IIUC that problem isn't listed to Pop_OS.

[smoldesu]

> Well, except for the crappy BT audio, but IIUC that problem isn't listed to Pop_OS.

Depends on if they've updated to PipeWire or not. PulseAudio/ALSA are terrible at negotiating Bluetooth connections, but PipeWire has been rock-solid in my experience. Since Pop is still on x11 they probably haven't updated yet, but it's likely coming soon.

[borodi]

Pop has pipewire since 22.04 IIRC.

[smoldesu]

Ah, very nice. Still a tad fresh, people who haven't updated to the latest LTS release might have missed it. That being said, it's totally the right call going forward. Very cool to see them using it with Xorg!

[JoBrad]

I haven't had any issues with it, so far.

[stingraycharles]

Yeah I never understood why they are spending so much time on this. Seems like they would be better off improving the hardware offering, or just making generic integrations which work on any Linux distribution?

[tomschlick]

> or just making generic integrations which work on any Linux distribution

Thats how you make something that doesnt look good or function that well because you're focusing on too much.

They are taking the Apple path with linux. Make the hardware and make the software tailored for the hardware for a great experience. Yes they support people installing on stuff other than their hardware, but they make sure their hardware is supported and runs well.

[stingraycharles]

But you need to have a pretty large ecosystem / platform to be the size of Apple to be actually benefiting from the huge investment it takes to maintain an OS / distribution like that. Especially the rewrite to Rust, it just makes me wonder the costs / benefits of this.

Isn't there a more reasonable middle-ground, e.g. just saying "we officially support Ubuntu / Fedora" or something like that, and making sure those two distros actually work well out of the box?

As an anecdote, I have got my framework laptop this summer, and it works really well out of the box pretty much anywhere. I'd argue that framework is a pretty direct competitor to system76, except framework seems to be innovating on the hardware part rather than the Linux distro part. Which makes way more sense business-wise to me.

[jrm4]

I mean, sounds WAY better than whatever the heck the Ubuntu people think they're doing these days. Which -- whatever it is, does emphatically not appear to be "making a good and usable desktop."

[zaphirplane]

At least the rust gui libraries get some polish. I tried iced and it’s an impressive piece of work but beauty can get some love

[edub]

My guess is that they are using what would otherwise be a marketing budget. If that is the case, then I'd say it is worth it and working. I'd bet more people have heard of POP_OS then System76, which would increase exposure of their hardware.