Comments on The Silent Number: Top 5 things we'd all love to see from System76

I just met with Carl at System76 last week looking...

2009-08-24T14:27:26.122-04:00

I just met with Carl at System76 last week looking over the 15.4" laptops they offer. VERY nice looking systems. The Serval is very sturdy feeling and has all the options I want in a laptop but one.

There is no docking station options for their laptops. I almost always run multi-monitor setups at the home office and at the company office. It is MUCH easier to just drop the laptop into the docking station when I get there than it is to plug in keyboard, mouse, network, power and monitor each time.

"If someone from System76 stumbles across this, fe...

2009-08-23T05:08:51.592-04:00

"If someone from System76 stumbles across this, feel free to send me a laptop to use in the meantime since i just graduated high school and could really use one."

If you send them a check first, they will certainly comply with your last request. They seem to be very good at this "laptop for money" game.

Is there _any_ reason to believe the Touch Pad is ...

2009-08-22T20:54:01.222-04:00

Is there _any_ reason to believe the Touch Pad is anything other investor bait vapor ware?

The media center is a great idea. I would also li...

2009-08-22T13:26:35.117-04:00

The media center is a great idea.

I would also like to see a 12" ARM-based fanless laptop/netbook!

+1 for Coreboot

2009-08-22T00:49:57.139-04:00

+1 for Coreboot

Coreboot would be cool but I don't really care for...

2009-08-21T16:35:15.444-04:00

Coreboot would be cool but I don't really care for the rest of the suggestions.

I would definitly buy a media center pc from Syste...

2009-08-21T14:40:25.627-04:00

I would definitly buy a media center pc from System76. Especially if it had mythbuntu, a tv card, and remote control all preconfigured.

@Anonymous2 - Umm...Everyone i know with a AMD lap...

2009-08-21T13:11:14.698-04:00

@Anonymous2 - Umm...Everyone i know with a AMD laptop say it's speedy, yes, but battery life is absolute crap on any OS and you could literally fry an egg on the bottom of the laptop case. Ergo...The 2 things you really don't want from a laptop, it does.

Yes, eventually the open-source drivers will help ATI cards suck less....but the specs have been out for about 2 years IIRC, and all the drivers still suck and there's still the problem of having 4 different Xorg drivers for ATI cards and not knowing which one to use.

For nVidia, you have:
xf86-video-nv: nv driver, FOSS, 2D only, not bad if you only want 2D.
xf86-video-nouveau: nouveau driver, FOSS, 2D and 3D, barely works on most cards. Not very recommended.
nvidia: nvidia binary driver, non-free, 2D and 3D support, works very well on all cards, the only driver that will give you everything. 2D performance isn't great compared to the nv driver, but it's not bad.

6) Intel video options. If I don't game all Syst...

2009-08-21T11:15:27.250-04:00

6) Intel video options. If I don't game all System 76 does is drive up my cost with hardware I have no use for. Leading me to...

6) Lower prices. Even with the Mircosoft-tax, I can usually price out lighter, better-looking, just-as-powerful(with the exception of video) laptops from other manufactures for a LOT cheaper.

@JD,,, I've never had a problem with an AMD noteb...

2009-08-21T11:12:40.178-04:00

@JD,,,

I've never had a problem with an AMD notebook. I've gamed on them, and used them for school. There's no reason not to use them in a notebook.

Secondly, the reason ATI's cards don't perform as well in Linux as nVidia's is because ATI's Linux drivers SUCK. If Eventually, the latest open source ATI driver should correct this issue and both cards will have equal performance in Linux.

4) Not, not "we'd all love to see". Keep it to "I'...

2009-08-21T10:39:12.584-04:00

4) Not, not "we'd all love to see". Keep it to "I'd love to see".

A solid state drive (SSD) option on the Meerkat Io...

2009-08-21T10:17:05.978-04:00

A solid state drive (SSD) option on the Meerkat Ion NetTop gets my vote. The Meerkat Ion NetTop will make a great MythTV frontend.

There’s another tablet-like device that comes with...

2009-08-21T09:42:33.017-04:00

There’s another tablet-like device that comes with a Linux-based system (only): the Touch Book.

The #1 thing keeping me from System76 laptops are ...

2009-08-21T08:43:09.971-04:00

The #1 thing keeping me from System76 laptops are the mouse eraser pointers (trackpoint). I just can't stand touchpads and since I use my laptop 95% of the time, the mouse available is a crucial hardware component.

Yep, I have to say I'd be pleased as punch if Syst...

2009-08-21T03:36:08.154-04:00

Yep, I have to say I'd be pleased as punch if System76 did Coreboot machines.

And I'd also love to see some people do some viral advertising, myself included. Just a subtle user-made commercial or something.

4. Unnecessary. As far as CPU, you don't want to p...

2009-08-21T02:56:38.243-04:00

4. Unnecessary. As far as CPU, you don't want to put a AMD CPU in a laptop. That's just a fact. If it's a Desktop/Media Center, that's a different story, but i'd rather go Intel.

As far as Video Card, i would argue that AMD/ATI's "open-sourcing" of some of their specs has done more ham than good. These days there are so many X.Org drivers for ATI that it's next to impossible to figure out which to use. Also, ATI cards do not perform as well as nVidia and ATI cares less about linux. You may say that statement contradicts what i just said, but it doesn't:

ATI has created something called XvBA which is basically video (like movies, to clarify) acceleration in the GPU...However they haven't released the specs so no one can code XvBA support into their media player. When nVidia released VDPAU (their video acceleration API/standard), not only did they release API calls, they released extensive documentation and a few patches for MPlayer.

ATI only just released Catalyst 9.8 with support for kernels 2.6.29 and 2.6.30...It took them nearly 6 months to support a new kernel version which is likely as simple as adding a line to a text file, compiling a kernel module to test and re-packing the binary. Whereas nVidia usually releases a new version within 2-3 weeks of a new kernel release and they make updating it quickly if you can't wait super easy (IIRC, you add a switch to the command that builds the kernel module).

I'm sure you can hash up more examples such as: "Who supported OpenGL 3.0 on linux first? Oh yeah, nVidia"
but i'm too lazy to find more examples of AMD/ATI fail.

I would like to buy stuff from System76, but I am ...

2009-08-21T02:54:12.136-04:00

I would like to buy stuff from System76, but I am from Europe/Austria and there is nothing similar here and System76 doesn't ship outside USA/Canada.

Even Dell doesn't offer a lot of Systems with Ubuntu. It's nearly impossible to buy good hardware (especially notebooks) with Ubuntu/Linux here in Europe/Austria.

What I like to see from System76 is the option to ...

2009-08-21T02:31:01.615-04:00

What I like to see from System76 is the option to ship to Germany...