HP and System76 Announce the Dev One Laptop

HP has teamed up with System76 to create a developer-focused laptop, called the Dev One, which ships with System76's own Pop!_OS Linux distribution and starts at $1,099. The original announcement came out in May 2022 and, at the time, the laptop was unavailable for pre-order. Fast forward to today and users in the US can now order one of these shiny new pieces of Linux-powered hardware. The Dev One keeps the prices slightly lower by going with an AMD CPU and shrugs off a discrete graphics card. The base model ships with an 8 Core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U processor with a 1.9-4.4GHz clock speed, an integrated AMD Radeon graphics chipset, and 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM (upgradable to 64GB). The chassis is .75" thick and has a 1TB PCIe 3x4 NVMe M.2 2280 SSD, and the display is 14" FHD at 1920x1080 and 1,000 nits max brightness. However, due to the display glass, the brightness is actually 800 nits. The Dev One also has a tuned Linux keyboard that turns away from the Windows key in favor of a Super key and is built to help you code faster and better. The specs claim up to 12 hours of battery life.

Although the rumors have been running rampant that this effort could wind up with HP buying System76, Carl Richell, the CEO and founder of System76, assured me that was just that – a rumor. One thing to note is it seems there is no way to currently upgrade the base spec model on the order site. However, you can add a System76 Launch Keyboard for an added $285.

NixOS 22.5 Is Now Available

NixOS is a unique take on Linux in that everything (including the kernel, applications, system packages, and configuration files) is built by the Nix package manager. And by isolating the applications from one another, the developers have achieved a distribution without using /bin, /sbin, /lib, or /usr directories. Instead, all packages are stored within /nix/store.

With the release of NixOS 22.5, 9,345 new packages have been added and 10,666 have been updated. This was achieved thanks to 1,611 contributors and 46,727 commits. Impressive.

This new release includes Nix 2.8, which fixes several issues, improves usability, and bolsters performance. The biggest change to Nix comes by way of the flakes experimental features, which allow you to specify code dependencies in a declarative way by listing them (in JSON format) within a flake file. This is achieved with the help of the nix fmt command, which is used to correctly format a flake (using the formatter.<system> formatter).

NixOS 22.5 also includes a new graphical installer, which is based on the Calamares project, to make installing NixOS considerably easier.

Download your copy of NixOS (https://nixos.org/download.html) and make sure to read the official release notes (https://nixos.org/blog/announcements.html#nixos-22.05) to find out more about what's included in this latest iteration.

Titan Linux Is a New KDE Linux Based onDebian Stable

With a foundation built on the Debian Stable Branch, Titan Linux (https://techcafe757.wixsite.com/titanlinux) takes a functional, yet a minimal, approach to KDE Plasma to create an operating system that is as functional as it is performant. Titan Linux features a minimal KDE Plasma desktop, the stable LTS kernel, a wide range of hardware support, a large independent community of supporters, and a brand new management system (called the Titan Toolbox) that makes it possible to manage the operating system with a single click.

This new distribution is built with the end user in mind and eliminates the dependency on meta-packages to create a remarkably stable system. Titan Linux defaults to a global dark theme and adds just enough eye candy to make it elegant, without bogging down the system.

Currently, Titan Linux is led by Matthew Moore, and Cobalt Rogue serves as the head developer.

The source for Titan Linux can be viewed and downloaded from the official Titan Linux GitHub page (https://github.com/MrGizmo757/Titan_Linux), and you can download an ISO image to install (https://sourceforge.net/projects/titan-linux/files/latest/download).