System76’s Integrated Open Source Distro
A Rare Find
System76 integrates its open source distro, Pop_OS!, with hardware, giving Linux users a taste of what Windows and macOS users have always enjoyed.
In an earlier issue of Linux Magazine, I wrote about Pop!_OS, the recent distro by System76. At the time, it seemed to me that Pop!_OS’s main feature was the simplest and most effective tiling window manager yet (Figure 1). However, more recently, as I shopped for a new laptop and eventually purchased one from System76, I realized that I was looking at something rare: a commercial distribution that was integrated into the hardware, with utilities designed specifically for System76 computers and keyboards. The only other example of an integrated commercial distro of which I am aware is Purism, a company in the same niche. Intrigued, I asked CEO Carl Richell (Figure 2), Marketing Director Louisa Bisio, and Media Relations Manager Adam Balla for more information. What follows are their collective answers.
Figure 1: The controls for the Pop!_OS tiled window manager.
Figure 2: Carl Richell, Founder and CEO of System76.
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