I ordered a Pangolin yesterday as I've been waiting for an AMD laptop forever. This is my third System76 laptop, and the first two are still great.

My first was a Galago Pro, and my only complaint was that I went HiDPI. That was just a bad choice on my part. The software supports it fine, I just don't prefer it in a laptop unless it's literally a Mac-level Retina-quality panel. It wasn't, but it's half the price point.

My other is a Gazelle 15", which dual-boots Arch and Windows. I use it primarily as a gaming box when I travel (remember those days?). I spent a lot of raid nights on various MMOs from hotel rooms. It works great.

Really looking forward to the Pangolin. Mine is still in "building" status.

I see a lot of sh*t written about System76 because they are just rebranded Clevos. Well...yeah? They are, and they are fine. I would rather give money to a company like System76 a thousand times over than someone dripping with anti-consumer behavior like Dell.

System76 is incredible. I have nothing but good things to say. They are the future of Linux.

Re: Clevo - obligatory copy pasta from System76 Chief Engineer right here on HN [1]

"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."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17040293

Thank you for the quote, I hadn't seen that. I certainly didn't mean to trivialize their work (obviously? since I've voted with my wallet 3 times)

Their work on both the firmware front and with Pop!_OS should not be overlooked. And, it should be mentioned, if one is familiar with their whole product line - they now go far beyond just laptops for the open source community. And their powerhouses are absolutely not from some other OEM.

Yes excited for custom System76 laptops someday. When they're ready of course, slow and steady is the way to go.

I've been using an Oryx Pro (v5) for a few years. It's mostly fine.

My main disappointment is that it doesn't "just work" with the kernels shipped by Ubuntu. System76 provides their own kernel packages, but they sometimes cause weird conflicts with other low level packages, and it can't hold its charge when suspended. I haven't attempted to debug the issue because I usually stay plugged in when I'm working, but I suppose I ought to engage tech support. They have been helpful in the past.

At the end of the day, I'll probably still give them my first look if I'm shopping for another laptop.

I also have had an Oryx Pro for several years. I stuck with System76's branded Linux, just do updates as they are available, and so far all has been well. I like that they keep CUDA working with very few hassles.

Compare this to my migration to a M1 MacBook Pro: I love it, but it is rough doing deep learning on it.

see my comments above in this thread. specific comments are welcome. i love talking about this thing :) As a Mac user, the build is about what you would expect from a PC. It's not one of those nightmare shit PCs. It does its job.

Get that Pangolin before they sell out! Is there a Labor Day sale or something?

I'm hoping there's a Labor Day sale :) Thanks for the comments, I'm motivated to take the plunge now!

Also, what pushes you to get a Pangolin (AMD) instead of Lemur (Intel)? I'm curious because I don't really understand the meaningful difference and bought the Lemur when it was in stock.

For APUs there's no beating AMD Ryzen, especially if you're into gaming. Also my Windows laptop has a Ryzen and I'm just used to it now.