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Comment by throwaway13337 | Hacker News Reader

A desktop linux could really grab an audience right now with the current state of windows and the agnosticism that is common in today's applications. The problem with desktop linux has always been that polish isn't quite there.

Things like handling gracefully video card/dual monitor, audio switching, and sleep mode recovery end up being headaches that use up a lot of time googling around and generally learning about stuff you shouldn't have to know.

It would be nice to see a company that specializes in a linux flavor sell a machine that is specifically built for that OS and with high build quality. Chromebooks are the closest thing to that but pushing a web-only interface is a major drawback.

Are there any serious projects in this direction?

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KDE just started shipping their own distro with Neon that always pushes the latest desktop rather than freezing it between releases on Ubuntu. It would be really neat to see notebooks shipping with it preinstalled.

System76 might be what you're looking for here.

One of many, many resellers of generic China OEM laptops with zero development capacities by themselves.

Do you happen to know if they use Clevo, or somebody else? I'd be curious to know which China OEMs are at least marginally Linux friendly.

afaik they mainly use clevo

They do offer apt repos with some light configuration, firmware installation, etc. I referenced their source code when setting up my equivalent Clevo from pro-star.

Closest thing to an off the shelf Linux MBP: https://puri.sm/

It's a scam project. They claim 100% open hardware but it's just an off the shelf Intel laptop with closed firmware and ME intact. You'd do better with something from System76 or a similar Linux-first vendor.

They did make over-ambitious claims when they were initially crowdfunding/scoping, but I don't think it's their fault that Intel run the processor market for laptops. I think it's good (if naive) that they were shooting for the FSF hardware badge.

I've spent a few minutes on a Librem 13, and it seems like an extremely high quality piece of hardware. It's cool that they're assembled in South San Francisco, too. I really really want to like System76 machines, but they're just so damned ugly!

They didn't just make the claims during crowdfunding, they doubled down after release. They are charging a premium for a claim of fully open hardware that they can't back up. You can get the same hardware at the same quality level for hundreds less and install your own Free OS. No, you're still not going to get a fully open BIOS, but at least you're not paying hundreds more to be lied to about it. They made promises that Intel would allow them source access to ME and other low level BIOS components, when Intel obviously would never do such a thing for one small startup. The whole project stinks of bait-and-switch.

Your best bet for a Librem-quality machine that is actually designed to run Linux is a Google Chromebook Pixel. If you want a truly 100% open from the chips up laptop, right now your only option is Bunnie's Novena, but it's not for the faint of heart; it's a true hacker's machine and not a ripoff of a MacBook.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Purism-Li...

https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-p...

I've been keeping tabs on ChromeOS as well. Right now the variations out there aren't as flexible or well-suported as Elementary, largely because it's essentially Ubuntu LTS.

Dell comes closest with their Developer Edition, but even they aren't trying too hard and just tell people to suck it up when e.g. the touchpad firmware is broken.

Dell is really not trying. Most laptops ship with touchpads that work fine on Linux. Dell ships buggy, painful firmware with a premium laptop, and people give them the benefit of the doubt because it's a "Linux problem," not their mistake.

Have you seen the buggy behaviour you mention with the Developer Edition laptops?

Their Developer Edition laptops get special treatment with regards to Linux compatibility. At one point, the made the the company they sourced some new touchpads from develop drivers for Linux and got it upstreamed.

My company issued me one when I started a few months ago. I tried really hard to make it work, but the thing was too buggy in too many different ways. I finally gave up and grabbed a random old Lenovo out of storage, put an SSD, 16GB of RAM, and a new battery in it and it works great.

Do you have more details? I was just about to get one of those.

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